HE PROBLEM OF 
ATONEMENT 





Class 

Book _._. 
Copyright iN°. 







COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PROBLEM OF 
ATONEMENT 



By 

W. ARTER WRIGHT, Ph. D., D. D. 

Author of 
"The Moral Condition and Development of the Child." 



Columbus, Ohio: S. F. HARRIMAN. 



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TO WHOM I HAVE MINISTERED AND IN COLLABORATION 
WITH WHOM THEBE CONCLUSIONS HAVE BEEN WROUGHT 
OUT IN CONGREGATIONS LOCATED FROM THE ATLANTIC 
OCEAN TO THE PACIFIC, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED BT THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Chapter I. 
What Is Required: The Problem Stated, - 13 

Chapter II. 
The Limitations of Atonement, - - 57 

Chapter III. 
The Vicarious Principle, 81 

Chapter IV. 
The Cross a Revelation, - - - - 106 

Chapter V. 
The First Step — Propitiation, - - - 119 

Chapter VI. 
Substitution, ------ 170 

Chapter VII. 
The Dynamic of Atonement — Spiritual In- 
fluence, ------- 217 

Chapter VIII. 
The Objective Result — Justification, - 238 

Chapter IX. 
The Subjective Result — Sanctification, - 261 

Chapter X. 

The Believer's Atonement, ... 280 

5 



INTRODUCTION. 

The work of Christ, commonly called the Atone- 
ment, is the work which lies at the center of human 
history. It illustrates what is ever going on at 
the heart of the world. No life in a world like 
ours is ever possible that does not manifest the 
vicarious principle. Hence we are to study the 
act of Christ under the term the " Cross" as not 
only an act of historic importance, by which man 
and God were once provided with a basis of recon- 
ciliation, but also as an act illustrative of the liv- 
ing relations between his Church and the world. 
"As was he, so are we in this world." 

Two attitudes of mind concerning the work 
of Jesus may be assumed. The first is that taken 
under the spontaneous impulse of worship, or a 
reverential feeling — that his work was altogether 
unique, unshared by any of his followers. It has 
been thought lacking in reverence to suppose that 
any other person could do a work having the same 
relations to salvation as his. Being the only Be- 
gotten Son of God, his work must be distinguished 
from that of all creatures. Hence none but those 
who viewed him from the Unitarian standpoint, 
it was thought, would ever represent another's 
7 



INTRODUCTION. 

work as the same in kind as his, even while con- 
ceding that his in its degree may be far removed 
from that of any one else. This, probably, has 
been the attitude of mind of a vast majority of 
his followers. 

The other attitude is the outcome of a second 
thought. It is that Jesus is most exalted in hav- 
ing attributed to him the exemplification of some 
of the great principles that may be universal in 
the world ; that others may follow him in the path- 
way of his influence, and take up his work where 
he laid it down, and carry it on in its universal 
sweep in the world; that he may have not only 
disciples, but followers. Specifically the atoning 
principle which he came into the world to exem- 
plify may be manifested by all who share his love 
for men, by all who will respond to the call of 
the All-Father to seek the lost and lift the fallen. 
Others may bring about the righteousness in men, 
which in the last analysis is that which propitiates 
the Father and his children. 

It must be admitted that the words of Jesus 
favor this latter attitude of mind. He called his 
disciples to follow him; to love one another as 
he loved them ; that they should do greater works 
than he had done; and that in many ways they 
should reproduce his work in the world. His 
power to reproduce workers on this high plane 
shows him greater than to imagine that he alone 
could do such work. His greatest work in the 
world is the reproduction of Christ-ones (Chris- 
tians). 

8 



INTRODUCTION. 

It would be difficult to discover another ele- 
ment that has not been mentioned in the dis- 
cussions concerning the atonement in the long 
centuries. This general theme has been the great 
subject for men's study and thought during all 
the ages, not only Christian ages, but all world 
ages. It is probable that it will be the theme for 
all ages to come. Any age that does not take up 
this theme and think it through again will have 
dropped into the period of moral and mental de- 
cline. 

While no new elements may be discovered, yet 
conviction on the subject is constantly to be pro- 
duced. So much has been said, so many sources 
have been exploited, secondary as well as funda- 
mental elements have been discussed, that a new 
evaluation must ever be made, while the subject 
tends to become more and more complicated by 
the numberless disputants. It will ever be in- 
cumbent upon us to study the subject again, for 
the purpose of eliminating the irrelevant as well 
as with the object of elaboration. 

One can not but feel that the subject has been 
complicated as well as enlightened by the work of 
theologians. They have often built their system 
from a false point of view, the view that repre- 
sents God as a Judge or a Ruler simply. The 
implications of law courts have been wrought into 
this doctrine until it is much more complicated in 
theological treatises that seek to explain it than 
it is in the Bible or life itself. Much of this 
material must be renounced or left to one side by 
9 



INTEODUCTION. 

estimating the problem from the viewpoint of the 
Fatherhood of God, which is inclusive of all that 
is true in that which views God as Judge or Sec- 
tor. It is our belief that the subject admits of 
much more simple statement, even though the im- 
plications are multitudinous: for sin, atonement, 
reconciliation are fully illustrated by the life we 
all live. 

One can not read very far in the literature of 
the atonement before he comes to the impression 
of a sort of frame-up, such as has been connected 
with the ideas of imputation of guilt or of right- 
eousness, substitution of Christ, whether for pur- 
poses of suffering or award. The impression on 
the mind that is bold enough to acknowledge its 
own impression to itself, is that of unreality. 
Nothing like it is noted in life, except in certain 
rare cases, and all literature has been ransacked 
to find these unnatural cases. The final effect is 
that the popular mind pushes atonement to one 
side as not very important in the world in which 
we live, so different from the world in which these 
writers exercise their ingenuity. Atonement, a 
world-wide principle, permeating all the life we 
live, should be emancipated from this fictional air 
of unreality. 

Moreover, there is a work of disseminating 
and popularizing the teachings of choice scholars 
that remains to be done. Judged by numbers, the 
popular conceptions of the atonement are medi- 
eval; the finding of late studies are almost un- 
10 



INTRODUCTION. 

known except in certain rather limited circles. 
Certainly this is a subject of such central impor- 
tance in the religious life of the people that any 
increment of truth which may come to it by dili- 
gent research ought to be given to all the people 
as soon as it has been made fairly credible. 

The accretions that grow up around current 
doctrine and teaching of the atonement often 
control in the thought of Christians rather than 
those statements which are the well-reasoned and 
accepted teachings of religious scholars. The 
phrases that have been developed in evangelistic 
and devotional meetings have a very uncertain 
meaning often. If an attempt were made to re- 
duce them to some logical statement, they would 
probably be found quite outside the sphere of 
revelation. The phrase, "the blood of Jesus," is 
much abused in the cheaper songs of religious 
gatherings as well as in the speech of the people. 
These aberrations will need continual checking 
and correcting by ever-renewed study and state- 
ment of the doctrine of atonement. 

It would be almost a calamity for us to have 
some treatment on the atonement that should, 
from a doctrinal point of view, be regarded as 
the last word that need be or could be said on 
that subject. As a body of truth it would soon 
become traditional, indisputable, and negligible. 
Because we could not in any way improve it, we 
would neglect to think the subject through again 
from bottom to top and from side to side. The 
11 



INTRODUCTION. 

subject would become a dead, inert core of truth, 
and around it would grow the accretions of cur- 
rent phrase and popular interpretation, and in a 
few decades we would wake up to the fact that 
the truth concerning atonement had become lost 
in tradition and ignorant, unthinking apprehen- 
sion. "A cohesive Church must have a coherent 
creed. But it must be a dogma the Church holds, 
not one that holds the Church. The life is in the 
body, not in the system. It must be a dogma re- 
visable from time to time to keep pace with the 
Church's growth as a living body in a living 
world. The study of theology must go and go 
forward. Solution of the great problems must 
be both attempted and encouraged by vital faith." 
(Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 
213.) 



12 



The Problem of Atonement. 



Chapter I. 

WHAT IS REQUIRED— THE PEOBLEM 
STATED. 

The problem of the Atonement is the re-estab- 
lishment of fellowship between God and man; 
this, and nothing more. Accidentally, not ety- 
mologically, the word itself may present the prob- 
lem: at-one-ment. Whatever other problems 
there are in salvation — and there are many — they 
belong to other phases of the co-operation of God 
and men. If Fellowship and Communion can be 
established, all other desired results may come 
in their order. 

Creation's problem was the establishment of 
fellowship through the development of a nature 
that could harmoniously live its life with God. 
But now we have a problem of a very different 
and more difficult kind — a difficulty not of na- 
ture, but of moral disposition, a difficulty estab- 
lished through a misuse of volition or freedom. 
Sin is moral alienation, not merely because it 
meets the disapproval of God, but because it be- 
gets a centrifugal disposition in man, causing him 
to flee from God. His confidence in the mutual re- 
13 



THE PROBLEM OP ATONEMENT. 

lationship is destroyed, and his self-assertive atti- 
tude relative to God is established. 

Sin and its action are in the way of fellow- 
ship: how can they be overcome and removed 
from the way? 

I. What does God require? 

II. What does man's nature and condition re- 
quire! 

Our answer to these questions must constitute 
our problem. Has God's alienation from man 
resulted in a settled attitude of opposition and 
vengeance, so that he would not welcome a re- 
established fellowship? If this were the situa- 
tion, there would be no atonement-problem; for 
one of the parties would be implacable, and noth- 
ing could result from any effort. 

We are assured by revelation, and the assur- 
ance is the working basis of all teaching and effort 
looking toward salvation, that sin does not alien- 
ate God from man. He is grieved ; he is thwarted 
in his plans, but he still continues to love men. 
(John 3:16.) What demand, then, does God 
make upon man? Does he demand that man shall 
make complete restitution before he can be in 
fellowship with him? Shall man have to repair 
the damage that has been done? If he did, the 
problem would again be insoluble: for neither 
man nor God can do that. The damage is an 
eternal fact, inerasable; it will have to stand, so 
far as the past is concerned. 

What, then, is God's demand? Upon the an- 
14 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

swer to the question is the parting of the ways 
among theologians. Our way is the one that we 
can see ; he that has better vision may take some 
other path.* 

God's demands cover the future, and not the 
past; they cover the mutual relations of himself 
and his children, and are not a demand for the 
satisfaction of his own nature, when viewed alone 
out of relation to his children. His heart bleeds 
with the outrages of an irrecoverable past, but 
nevertheless, he turns in magnanimity and love 
and offers to forget it all (in a moral sense) if 
man will but turn and live righteously. Analyzed, 
the demand seems to be: 1) a turning from sin, 



*Shedd, in hia "History of Doctrine" (TT, 204"), decides the 
whole question of theory of the atonement by his definition. He 
says it "denotes the satisfaction of Divine ."justice for the sin of 
man, by the substituted penal sufferings of the Son of God." 
This narrows the atonement down to a very close line; but it is a 
preparation for the rejection of any atonement save the fact or 
the necessity of such an atonement as is acceptable to the author. 
To so narrowly define a subject that all conclusions save the 
author's are rejected in advance by definition we hold to be but 
a "begging of the question." It leaves no room even for the 
consideration of other views or other sides of the question. 

A more modern view is presented by Dr. Burton. "Atone- 
ment," he says, "is accomplished when men, abandoning their 
unloving way of life, turn with repentance to Jesus' way of 
life; forgiving as he forgave, loving as he loved. Apart from 
such repentance there is no forgiveness. The supreme signifi- 
cance of the death of Jesus as of his life is in its revelation of 
the will of God, and consequently of the ideal of life. It is 
redemptive for those who accept the truth thus revealed. Men 
are reconciled to God when, accepting the revelation made in the 
life and death of Jesus, they enter into the fellowship of his 
death and become partakers of his life. This is to eat his flesh 
and drink his blood. Thus he ransoms them from sin. Thus 
he brings them into covenant relation with God." ("Biblical 
Ideas of Atonement," 144.) 

15 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

a change of mind, of attitude, of purpose; a re- 
pentance; a conversion; 2) the acceptance of a 
righteous or new nature as a guarantee of right- 
eousness for the future. This second demand, so 
often overlooked as a necessity of the atonement, 
is quite as essential as the first. The problem in 
the concrete is to beget in man that life which 
John's Gospel defines as knowing God. 

There have been various elements brought 
into the atonement theory, such as the satisfac- 
tion of the Divine Nature concerning sins already 
committed, a meeting of the needs of moral gov- 
ernment, which, it is claimed, forbids forgiveness 
without the infliction of penalty as the price of 
forgiveness. But we believe that these demands 
are unfounded, that they grow up from legalistic 
considerations, borrowed from the forum, and not 
from the family, which make the atonement prob- 
lem, if allowed, insoluble. They have been raised 
up as legal barriers to forgiveness, and have in 
turn been removed by legal fictions, which is the 
only possible method by which they could be re- 
moved. For if God is actually alienated in feel- 
ing from man, then Christ can not remove that 
barrier; for Christ is in perfect harmony in 
feeling and attitude with the Father. What 
the Father would not do, the Son can not do. 
To attribute two wills on this subject to the 
Deity is anarchy in the Godhead. It creates 
difficulties a thousand-fold greater than it 
removes. 

We shall take up these subjects one by one 
16 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

later, but just now we inquire, What is the de- 
mand in the nature of man which the atonement 
must meet? 

Unquestionably the barriers in man are the 
greater. Man's consciousness of sin and its ill- 
deserts has broken down his confidence in the re- 
lationship with the Divine. He knows that he de- 
serves ill; he expects that God will visit it upon 
him. Further, the nature of sin itself is self- 
assertion relative to God, and this principle man 
has taken into his being. The problem of the 
atonement, then, relative to man is twofold: 1) 
Such an exhibition of Divine love as will take 
away his fear of God and establish the confidence 
which his own action has destroyed. 2) That God 
shall grant him a new nature that can keep the 
new law of love. If these conditions can be met, it 
seems possible for the Divine family again to be 
re-established. Phillips Brooks holds that "there 
is no principle involved in the atonement that is 
not included in its essence in the most sacred re- 
lations between man and man." 

Dinsmore says concerning a "sure instinct of 
our nature :" " There can be no forgiveness where 
love does not work in such a way as to satisfy 
the strictest demands of conscience and meet 
every requirement of perfect repentance." 
("Atonement in Literature and Life," 178.) 
What are these requirements? What does con- 
science demand of love? What are the require- 
ments of repentance? 

To answer the latter first, the first require- 
17 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ment of repentance is restitution. No one can 
believe that repentance has done its perfect work 
while the sinner is enjoying the fruits of his 
iniquity and the wronged one is suffering the loss 
of it. Does repentance require restitution in the 
case of man's sin? As far as possible. But if 
there is no restitution possible, then what must 
be done? In case man is morally bankrupt, that 
fact must be acknowledged and declared. This is 
confession. The only farther requirement of re- 
pentance that is conceivable is such a turning 
away from sin that it will not be repeated. This 
repentance must mean, if it be adequate to meet 
the demands of conscience. 

What does conscience demand of love? Does 
any conscience demand that before I accept for- 
giveness from my Father he must suffer the pen- 
alty that was due me from him? We think it 
does not. It only demands that there shall be an 
exhibition on his part of love so clear that I can 
trust it. My conscience would protest, as we be- 
lieve, against my heavenly Father bearing the 
penalty that was due me from sin. 

What does conscience demand of me before 
God can forgive ? Simply that my life should be 
yielded to God in obedience. It demands this 
utterly; but has nothing to say concerning a suf- 
fering that is in no sense a restitution. Confes- 
sion of bankruptcy obliterates any ground of de- 
mand for suffering and pronounces its infliction 
a fruitless cruelty. 

18 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

It may help our thought if we turn aside for 
a moment and see how our problem has been 
estimated by some of the most original and pene- 
trating minds. The following quotations con- 
cerning the view of Dante are from Dinsmore, 
"Atonement in Literature and Life:" "He ac- 
cepted the prevalent notion of his time that 
Christ's death on the cross was a price paid to 
divine justice, remitting the eternal penalties of 
sin to all who by baptism and repentance identi- 
fied themselves with the Son of God." To com- 
plete his reconciliation with God man must pass 
the gate of justification, for which three steps are 
necessary: confession, contrition, satisfaction; 
the latter is the work of Christ supplemented by 
"the sinner's own expiatory deeds." Further, 
the sinner must practice virtue, "so as both to 
satisfy divine justice and heal the wounds sin 
has made in his soul. ' ' The picture of the atone- 
ment for memory, provided by drinking the wa- 
ters of Lethe, is, of course, a personal picture, 
and not one that enters into the Christian con- 
ception. 

Of man's condition demanding atonement, 
Dante says: "And here must I bear this load for 
it (sin) till God be satisfied." "Of such pride 
the fee is here paid. " " Such coin does every one 
pay in satisfaction." "And to his dignity man 
never returns, unless where sin makes void, he 
fill up for evil pleasures with just penalties ! Al- 
though the arms of divine mercy are so widely 
19 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

extended, still God can not receive the sinner to 
himself until the void has been filled. Christ, who 
is the representative of both parties, by his death 
offers a satisfaction. He might have paid all the 
debt, but he lets man have some part in the work 
by enjoining upon him the expiation of all the 
temporal penalties of sin." Thus we see that 
Dante shrinks from the statement of substitution 
as the solution of the problem. But while the 
pains of Christ are not sheerly substitutionary, 
only being a partial satisfaction, yet they fulfill 
the further office of establishing the repentant 
sinner in righteousness. "They (expiatory pen- 
alties) are both a satisfaction rendered to a vi- 
olated moral order and are remedial to the peni- 
tent by confirming him in right habits of thought 
and action." 

It can hardly be denied that this statement of 
the problem is far from any agreement either 
with Scripture or the extreme satisfaction views 
that tradition has brought down to us. 

The problem of the atonement is often made 
absurd by the elimination of the moral element. 
Dr. Forsyth says: "We have to be saved into 
faith before we are saved by it. The power of 
sin is such that we can not believe to saving pur- 
pose except we are redeemed into that power. 
We can not believe even when we wish to." 
("Positive Preaching," 344.) 

"We are justified by faith," says Paul. But 
Dr. Forsyth would say that we can not have faith 
until we are justified. In other words, we can not 
20 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

be saved until we believe, and we can not have 
faith until we are saved. Of course, the answer 
to this riddle is : God gives us faith because he is 
going to save us; and then saves us because we 
have the faith that he has given us. This theory 
of redemption is built on the sovereignty of God. 
Man's co-operation is not necessary to salvation 
at all — that is, his free and real co-operation is 
not necessary. It includes, of course, a sort of 
automatic co-operation which, not depending on 
his own choice or action, has no moral quality in 
it. He is reduced to an automaton, arranged and 
manipulated by God. 

If this theory could be true, then there is no 
utility in our seeking the moral foundations of 
salvation. It is purely a question of Divine Sov- 
ereignty; God can do what he pleases, and will 
do it whenever and however it pleases him. For 
such a conclusion the whole plan of redemption 
seems but a stage play, no part of which grows 
out of moral necessity. God could have redeemed 
man some other way if he had cared to. All the 
reality and tragedy of the actual plan seem to be 
a mere gratuity. In that case it seems to us that 
God ought to have redeemed man in some way 
that was not so costly. 

That is a strange, if not a useless, conception 
of faith as a moral factor of salvation which says, 
"We can not believe even when we wish to." If 
some other potency is given to a "wish" than 
that which we ordinarily express by choice, then 
we have suppressed part of the facts in the case. 
21 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

We may wish one thing, bnt wish something else 
more, and hence choose the something else. If 
this was what is meant, then the problem was not 
candidly stated. But unless something more is 
said, the "wish to" represents the soul's choice — 
in this case the moral choice. Now, if some in- 
tellectual feat is too difficult for the soul that has 
made the moral choice of it, that intellectual feat, 
however important from the standpoint of intel- 
lectual gifts, has no adverse value in the soul's 
redemption. If I choose the Lord Jesus in my 
heart, I am sure of him, whether some contortion 
of mere belief is possible to me or not. In other 
words, faith is pre-eminently a moral act, a moral 
choice. It is irrelevant in a doctrine of redemp- 
tion to place some problem of belief in its way 
when the moral choice has been made. 

Sinfulness and atonement are closely related. 
In a sense atonement is the cure for sin. What 
the cure is in its nature, then, ought to receive 
some light from a correct apprehension of what 
the disease is. It is said that our age has not a 
deep sense of sin. Can we discover the cause of 
this! Shall we conclude that it is merely because 
man has a dull religious consciousness? This 
would hardly agree with what the age is produc- 
ing in many lines. 

It may be that sin has been wrongly appre- 
hended. The works of our older theologians show 
that sin has been regarded as largely a matter of 
the workings of the flesh. Fleshly lust of differ- 
22 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

ent kinds has been spoken of as though it con- 
stituted the very being of sin. This is doubtless 
a mistake. Sin is not in the flesh at all. The con- 
science of this age, which has apprehended much 
more of the light of truth than other ages, fails 
to feel condemned for the " movements" of the 
flesh, when those " movements" are entirely in 
the line of the laws of na ture as revealed through 
scientific disclosure. Sin is something that per- 
tains entirely to the spirit, the choice, the will. 
If this can be clearly apprehended we may hope 
that the conscience will again respond to the sense 
of sin. But the "movements of the flesh" we will 
regard as presenting temptations to the spirit, 
and many of them are open to physical rather 
than moral treatment. Acceptance of the atone- 
ment will not cure criminality in one in whom 
the basis of his evil doings is a pressure on the 
brain, a bad tooth, a growth in the nostril, etc., 
as is known to be often the case. It is only when 
the wicked choice is isolated and stands by itself 
that it may be a subject of moral remorse. 

Man's laws are operative only externally and 
violently, as we may say; God's laws, on the other 
hand, are operative internally, inevitably, auto- 
matically, and ofttimes, in the beginning, imper- 
ceptibly. We have been used to viewing the oper- 
ations of sin and its punishment under the forms 
of law of human sanction, by which we have seen 
only an external relation, a more or less capri- 
cious vindication, which by edict could be set 
aside. If we will undertake to see sin and the 
23 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

atonement under the methods in which God oper- 
ates, we may come nearer the truth than we have 
through the analogy of human law. 

Human sinfulness has come upon all men, not 
by an edict that God sent forth in which he cursed 
all mankind for the sin of one, but rather through 
the operation of the social law, which sees man- 
kind as an organism, and sin as a virus intro- 
duced into it, finding its way from individual to 
individual by the law of social relation or per- 
sonal contact. Under the former conception it 
could not be escaped by any moral attitude toward 
it, and hence lost its character as sin containing 
personal guilt. Under the latter conception it 
may be resisted by moral choice, and spreads by 
moral consent in so far as it is a moral con- 
tagion. Atonement seems to have the same na- 
ture. Christ did not atone for all men in the 
sense of a mere legal relation, whose benefits 
come to all without moral consent; but he did 
start a morally saving power which spreads un- 
der moral and social conditions and is available 
for all, if morally accepted. 

By this view sin is no less dreadful, nor atone- 
ment less helpful, but the conditions of both be- 
come moral in their influence and operation. 

Mankind has sinned. This is a fact so uni- 
versal that it is not much modified if we think 
of it as a race act, as in the traditional doctrine 
of the Fall, or whether we think of it as the un- 
exceptional experience of all members of the race. 
The former view does not, indeed, from the point 
24 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

of view of humanity's origin through a process of 
evolution, seem to be an enlightening explanation. 
But the fact of sin is so general that the picture 
of the Jewish account of the Fall in the Garden 
of Eden is a fairly accurate representation. 

Such a picture, it is true, implies that sin is 
a universal experience. This is going farther 
than we are justified in going from observation. 
Moreover, the problem of the atonement does not 
rest upon any a priori position that every man 
has sinned. We need not burden the discussion 
with a prophecy that there never will be a man 
who keeps God's moral law. The sinful condition 
of mankind is a situation requiring a helpful re- 
lief to every man, whether he personally has con- 
sciously disobeyed God or not. Every man needs 
assistance to come into the Divine fellowship and 
to grow into the Divine likeness, even though he 
may be groping after God the best that he can 
in such an environment as the present, and may 
be justified in his sight. In such social surround- 
ings, influenced and retarded by those who are 
disobedient to God, and enveloped in the igno- 
rance of his own unassisted powers, every man 
needs the God-man to enlighten him, as well as to 
cleanse him from the stain of sin. 

So we do not need to commit ourselves to a 
Race Fall. There has been practically, we will 
not say necessarily, an individual fall in the his- 
tory of all men. The problem of the atonement is 
to bring this sinner back to his Divine Father. 

All men sin. This is a statement of fact, not 
25 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

a statement of necessity. That all men sin some- 
times, is no more verifiable than that all men do 
right sometimes. That they sin is no greater 
proof of a sinful nature that necessitates them to 
sin than that they sometimes do right is a proof 
of a righteous nature that necessitates them to 
do right. Indeed, this idea of a constraining na- 
ture back of the deed takes away the moral quality 
of our deeds and does away both with sin and 
moral righteousness. The word ' ' necessity ' ' does 
not belong in a moral scheme, even though the 
observable facts might seem to yield to the ex- 
planation of a mechanical law. So we prefer to 
deal with sin as an empirical fact, not as a mat- 
ter which outflows from a fallen nature. Man's 
moral conflict is such that he can not unaided live 
a Godlike life. On the other hand, no man lives 
a life thus isolated from Divine aid except as he 
chooses. So his sinfulness is rooted in his moral 
choices, and not in some nature supposed to be 
back of his volitions. There is a nature back of 
his volitions, presenting the elements of moral 
contest; but it is not therefore a fallen or sinful 
nature. It is simply a non-moral, animal nature 
needing guidance and control, and for this control 
his higher spiritual nature is fitted and may suc- 
ceed when accepting the assistance of the Divine 
Spirit. Sin is seated always in this higher nature, 
and never in the lower. 

The problem of the atonement has usually 
been treated as if it were of a past broken and 
26 



WHAT IS REQUIEED. 

injured by sin, that God had undertaken to even 
up the world to a condition equal to and, some 
assume, surpassing what it would have been if 
sin had never entered. This makes the problem 
a very different one from what it would be if the 
past damage is discounted and we henceforth try 
to arrange for a future that may be saved from 
utter ruin. 

To assume that the past damage can be atoned 
for, that the universe can be made as good as new, 
is, as we think, a belittling of the nature of sin. 
Sin is an everlasting fact of tremendous impor- 
tance. Even God can not undo its damage. It 
has gotten into the construction of the world, and 
the past is a partial wreck, and the fact can not 
be unmade. ' ' Of this alone is even God deprived ; 
the power of making that which is past never to 
have been." (Aristotle.) The proposition of the 
atonement which is rational and possible, is the 
bringing the world into such a relation to God 
that the future may not be a wreck — an establish- 
ing of man in his present relations to God, such 
that he shall enter the future prepared to co-oper- 
ate with God for a righteous and happy world. 

That idea of forgiveness of sin which credits 
it with the power of wiping sin out, must have 
arisen when sin was regarded as involving per- 
sonal relations only, and such personal relations 
between man and God as are conceived to obtain 
between man and man. Probably our personal 
relations to God are never so superficial as this 
estimate pictures. But if, allowing this super- 
27 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ficial view for the moment, sin is merely a per- 
sonal affront to God, it is conceivable that its for- 
giveness might wipe it all out — its effects as well 
as its memory and record. But sin is something 
deeper than that; it enters into the constitution 
of the universe; it makes an impression on spir- 
itual and material substance which in its very 
nature is inerasable. It is altogether reverent to 
say that God himself can not make these impres- 
sions not to have been ; for that statement means 
the same as to say that he has willed not to. 

Hence, forgiveness can not do more than ad- 
just the personal relations between man and God, 
which will cover the record, so far as God's new 
relations are concerned. Concerning the con- 
sequences of sin which are wrought into the spir- 
itual and physical substance of the world, and 
the laws which govern the sequence of cause and 
effect, all that appears possible is that the amel- 
iorative forces shall operate for such restoration 
of man and the hurt universe as the nature of 
those forces would suggest to us. It is idle to 
define forgiveness as an entire wiping out of the 
consequences of sin. If that be the definition, then 
there is no such thing known as the forgiveness of 
sin. We will necessarily have to return to this 
subject when we come to the Limitation of the 
Atonement, and the Nature and Ground of For- 
giveness. We press it no further at this point 
than is necessary to show that it modifies the 
entire problem. 

An atonement that seeks to repair the past is 
28 



WHAT IS EEQUIEED. 

one in which punishment is regarded as the vin- 
dication of law rather than the reformation of 
the sinner. Human society through much of its 
history has regarded punishment in this former 
light ; but it is now turning away from that view 
and seeking to reform the sinner through his pun- 
ishment or imprisonment. The barrenness of 
past criminal practice and the fruitfulness of 
present is a vindication of the modern notion. 

In a forceful passage Fairbairn sets forth the 
two ideas under the contrast of a "Lord" and a 
"Servant." We give the passage here, although 
it presents points that we wish to discuss later. 
He says: " ' Lordship' of the heroic order is not 
a difficult thing to attain, for men of marked 
moral inferiority have attained it: Alexander, 
who was a youth of ungoverned passion; Caesar, 
who was a statesman more astute than scrupu- 
lous; Napoleon, who was but colossal obstinacy, 
loveless, and athirst for blood. But the pre- 
eminence that comes of being the ' servant of 
all' only Jesus has attained. . . . The 'lord' 
governs as a ruler, persons to him are nothing, 
order and law are all in all. The violated 
law must be vindicated, the man who breaks 
it must be broken. But the 'minister' serves 
as a Saviour; persons to him are everything; 
law and order are agencies for the creation of 
happy persons and the common weal. The law 
which 'lordship' enjoins is in its ultimate analy- 
sis force, and is, when violated, vindicated by the 
strength it commands ; but the end or law which 
29 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the ministry obeys is benevolence or, in its ulti- 
mate analysis, love, and it is vindicated only when 
it can, by the creation of a happy harmony be- 
tween the person and his conditions, overcome 
misery and its causes. . . . The 'lord' prevails 
by his power to inflict suffering, the ' minister ' 
by his power to save from it; but the saving is 
a process of infinite painfulness, while the inflic- 
tion is easy to him who has the adequate strength. 
The 'lord' has only so to marshal his forces as 
to work his will, but the 'minister' has to seek 
the person he would save, bear him in his own 
soul, quicken the dead energies of good within 
him by the stream of his own life, burn out the 
evil of the old manhood by the fire of consuming 
love. " (" Philosophy of the Christian Religion, ' ' 
407.) 

If any one had supposed on first view that 
this problem of establishing a basis for a future 
righteous universe was less than that of vindica- 
ting a past one from the outrages of sin, this pas- 
sage will set him right. Any exertion of power 
is a slight matter compared with the sacrifices 
of love. Whatever power might have done in 
legal vindication of a past, nothing less than love 
will solve the problem of man's future allegiance 
and loyalty. 

The wrath of God is often mentioned in the 

Bible. Is it a purpose of the Bible to make known 

that God is angry with his children, or is this 

mention in some way related to current belief, 

30 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

either from heathen conceptions or otherwise? 
This is a basic question in our study. The atone- 
ment is represented constantly as necessary, be- 
cause it was necessary to propitiate the favor of 
God. That God is opposed to sin is everywhere 
asserted. That can not be emphasized too often 
nor too strongly. Anything that would minify 
the opposition of God to sin is condemned in ad- 
vance. But conceding that God hates sin, does 
he hate the sinner? Is it a just distinction to 
maintain that he hates sin and is placable toward 
the sinner? 

It seems almost, if not quite, self-evident that 
God must sever his fellowship with the sinner. 
While the sinner sins, he assumes an attitude that 
makes fellowship with him on the part of God 
impossible; unless we call reproof and pleading 
a sort of fellowship. But how does God feel re- 
garding re-established fellowship? Does he de- 
sire it, or is his broken fellowship irrevocable? 
Does his condemnation go so far as to destroy 
any desire for a renewal of relations of com- 
munion with the sinner? Is not the testimony 
of Rom. 5 : 8 explicit and direct in answer to 
this question? "God commendeth his own love 
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us." We are inclined to believe 
that the Biblical representation is that of an un- 
broken solicitude on the part of God for the sin- 
ner's fellowship and for his welfare — of course, 
under restored conditions of holiness. We dare 
to apply the parable of the Prodigal Son at this 
31 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

point: the attitude of the father in that parable, 
while his son was away, is the attitude of God 
while man was a sinner. If this be true, then the 
problem of the atonement is the problem of the 
necessary means to be used in restoring the fel- 
lowship. How shall man be brought to a changed 
mind is the problem. We do not have to face 
the difficulty of how to placate the wrath of God. 
There is nothing in the way on his part that will 
prevent fellowship, unless it be in the interest of 
some third party. 

Some have thought of the interest of this party 
in the necessities of government; that forgiveness 
on the ground of repentance would leave govern- 
ment without dignity and sanction, without force ; 
in short, that men might sin and nothing would 
happen any more than if they should not sin. 

Josiah Royce in a late number of the Hibbert 
Journal (April, 1913) has set forth a doctrine of 
atonement which consists essentially in the re- 
payment of the Community or Kingdom of God. 
By it "the community is renewed, the spirit has 
triumphed, and the traitors (who destroyed the 
unity of the Community) are glad that the ir- 
revocable deed which they condemn has been made 
a source of a good which never could have existed 
without it." This at-one-ment of the Community 
is in no sense a contradiction or even an addition 
to our view. It is only a fragment of it. If Royce 
would bring into clearness the idea that God the 
Father is included in the Community, it would 
be identical. We need only add that in our view 
32' 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

God so identifies himself with his children, his 
family, his community, his Kingdom, that rela- 
tions properly adjusted to him bring us into fel- 
lowship with the Community or Kingdom. ''In- 
asmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye did it unto me." 

With one part of Royce's statement, that the 
"irrevocable deed" of the "traitors" is a "source 
of good," we have no sympathy. We deal with it 
more explicitly elsewhere ; but here we stop only 
to say that sin is no necessary part of God's right- 
eous program. 

In our study of the limitation of the atonement 
we may find that forgiveness need not, and prob- 
ably does not, imply the removal of all penalty, 
if it implies the removal of any. This inescapable 
penalty leaves government with the full sanction, 
while reconciliation with God is a problem apart. 
Indeed, the questions are quite separable: re- 
newed fellowship with God, and removal of sin's 
consequences. In any case the necessities of gov- 
ernment are secured by the changed character 
from a sinful purpose to a righteous purpose. 
The sinner can not be forgiven unless he will 
accept, as a gift, the righteous nature that will 
keep the law and uphold the government. Gov- 
ernment, then, is not endangered so much by for- 
giveness on such terms as it is by the continuance 
of alienation and rebellion. 

So we are unable to see that the interests of 
any third party are involved in the immediate 
reconciliation of the Father and his child by the 
« 33 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

child giving up his rebellion. No change is needed 
in the mind of God ; his love has not been de- 
stroyed. It is ready to be displayed as soon as 
the sinner will put himself in an attitude where it 
can do so consistently. We can discover nothing 
in the nature of God that needs removal by some 
sacrifice or payment of penalty. The " wrath of 
God" is relative, and not absolute; its only atone- 
ment needed is the change of the sinner's mind. 

Theologians have passed all limits of thought 
and just conceptions when they have affirmed that 
the Father was angry with the Son. This may 
be the inevitable conclusion of any earnest doc- 
trine of substitution ; but if so, it is the reductio 
ad absurdum of that doctrine. If substitution 
requires such a conclusion, then we must formu- 
late our doctrine of atonement with this absurdity 
omitted. No possible evidence could establish it ; 
for it transcends a law of morals as fundamental 
as any law of mentality. But happily we dare 
to believe that any supposed evidence for it is 
equivocal; other constructions of alleged Scrip- 
ture proof are possible and credible. "What tact 
is shown by the apostles in their never speaking 
of Jesus as bearing the Divine wrath! Our sins 
he has borne on the tree. God has made him to 
be sin. He became a curse. The punishment lay 
upon him. He is set forth for a manifestation of 
the righteousness of God in his blood. That the 
apostles, using such strong expressions, yet never 
make mention of the Divine wrath towards the 
34 



WHAT IS BEQUIBED. 

Atoner, has its root in the feeling that anger sig- 
nifies a state of indignant feeling that we dare 
never attribute to the mind of the holy God to- 
wards the holy Jesus. . . . Punishment may 
fall upon the innocent along with the guilty, anger 
can be directed only against the guilty. The in- 
nocent children of a murderer must, in accordance 
with the Divine order of the world, bear a portion 
of the punishment of their father; that God is 
angry with them, no intelligent man would dream 
of saying. And the idea of the Father being 
angry with the Son, who drinks the bitter cup in 
obedience to the Father! Angry at his deed of 
self-sanctification, John 17 : 19 ! . . . Not only 
the language of science, but that of edification 
ought once for all to free itself from such inepti- 
tudes of expression which have an effect the op- 
posite of edification in the case of thinking per- 
sons, especially of those who think in accordance 
with Scripture." (Gess, "Christi Person und 
Werk," iii, 442.) 

What may be called the New Criminology is 
based not on arguments for the rights of the 
State, but openly in the interest of the good of 
the criminal. Anything bearing on the future of 
this man, and having to do with the possibility 
of him becoming a good citizen, and having an- 
other chance, makes its strong appeal to the pub- 
lic mind. For example, we are besought to teach 
the criminal a trade that will be available and 
useful when he is freed; we hear of arguments 
35 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

for paying him wages that ho may support his 
family, if he has one, or may have something to 
start on when he goes again into liberty. We 
hear of no counter arguments on behalf of the 
State, such as that he has wronged it and deserves 
nothing from it. No such assertions would make 
any appeal at present to the public mind. The 
new criminology is based not upon the abstract 
idea of justice, as was the old criminology, but 
upon the ground of social welfare, which is the 
idea of justice made concrete and broadened. In 
the end this is justified by its effects on the State. 
If the criminal is changed into a good citizen, the 
State will be benefited and "vindicated" in a 
much higher way than it has been by the opera- 
tion of the old and narrow views of justice. 

The argument admits of a wider application 
than that of the civil state. The universe is vin- 
dicated by that atonement and administration of 
justice which makes bad men good men. It is an 
empty "vindication" which merely inflicts suffer- 
ing without accomplishing any change of charac- 
ter. We are of opinion that a doctrine of the 
atonement formulated in the atmosphere of the 
New Criminology will have a different aspect 
from the one which was formulated under the 
spirit of the old Criminology: for the atonement 
is nothing more than the application of a social 
justice as conceived by men to the problem of 
crime. 

Dr. J. A. Leonard, of the Ohio State Reforma- 
tory, has instituted what he calls the Bankruptcy 
36 



WHAT IS EEQUIRED. 

Court in the Reformatory, which is a very inter- 
esting working experiment in some of the funda- 
mental principles involved in the problem of 
atonement. There is in the institution a system of 
merits which have some relation to parole and ul- 
timate release. But some poor fellows have such 
a bad record that they never can overcome it, so 
many demerits that they will never get to the 
place where they can have any merits. Such fel- 
lows are without any incentive for improvement. 
For them the Bankruptcy Court is instituted. If 
for thirty days one has a clean record, he may 
come and have a hearing before this Court, and if 
acted upon favorably, his bad record in the Re- 
formatory is wiped out forever. Then he is 
placed in a position where he may establish a rec- 
ord of merits, which leads to a standing in the 
Reformatory and gives him an equal opportunity 
with those who have had a good record. This may 
lead to parole and ultimate earlier discharge from 
custody. 

Here in living operation are the principles in- 
volved in our problem: a record invincible; a 
change of mind, or repentance; a forgiveness, 
affording a basis of righteousness, while the 
broader problem of salvation is being worked out. 
Behind it all a superintendent, who takes upon his 
own heart the welfare of each criminal, sympa- 
thizing with them in their weakness, planning for 
their betterment, on occasion turning from their 
gaoler to be their suppliant to lead a new and 
better life. Of course, this last factor is more 
37 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

than any scheme of salvation or atonement, and 
has its analogue in the love of the Father, whose 
love was unto the death. 

The old Criminology was based on the idea of 
the vindication of government. The majesty of 
law was vindicated by stern and dreadful punish- 
ment in which repentance played no part. Mack- 
intosh, speaking in the House of Commons no 
longer ago than March 2, 1819, said, "I hold in 
my hand a list of those offenses which at this 
moment are capital, in number two hundred and 
twenty-three." Who will now defend this harsh 
view of the vindication of government? By what 
infinitesimal amount was government more ma- 
jestic because of the infliction of such harsh pun- 
ishments ? Did it thus prevent the commission of 
crime ? Did it secure a greater proportion of good 
citizens ? Did it make good men out of bad men ? 
Did it prevent good men from becoming* bad? 
Did it not miss entirely that greatest glory that 
any government can ever have — the glory of win- 
ning men from evil to good, or transforming evil 
men into righteous? 

It was in the days of such harsh and futile 
views of dealing with criminals in the civic world 
that the Satisfaction theory of atonement was 
produced in the theological world. That theory 
obscures the greatest glory of God as the other 
obscured the highest potential glory of human 
government. 

We have now a new theory of government, 
essentially different in its view of governmental 
38 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

function — a view that seeks not an ostentatious 
vindication of the majesty of law and government, 
but a government operating in accordance with 
the laws of human nature which seeks to rescue 
men from criminal character. Compared with 
Divine administration it operates without assured 
and infallible knowledge of repentance and inner 
human purpose. Hence, as compared with any 
method that God may use, it is compelled to intro- 
duce the principle of Probation, not as an element 
of punishment, but to demonstrate the reality of 
change of mind and the adoption of a new and 
upright inner purpose. But for this distinction, 
this new Criminology might be used as a full illus- 
tration of the Divine method and the elements in- 
volved in atonement. 

The following is a sample card that is now 
being placed in the hands of an offender who is 
turned over to the direction of a Probation Officer, 
who shall deal with him in the interest of the State 
against which he has sinned: 

Commonwealth op Massachusetts. 

The Court has placed you on probation under 
bonds to give you an opportunity to reform with- 
out punishment, and the Probation Officer has be- 
come your bondsman to save you from prison on 
the following terms and conditions: 

That you diligently pursue some lawful employ- 
ment; 

That you be of good behaviour and keep the peace 
toward all persons ; 

39 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

That you report to the Probation Officer at such 
times and places as he may require; 

That you pay to the Court the costs you have 
made the county when the Court requires ; 

That you notify the Probation Officer immediately 
of any change in your address. 

If your promise is willfully violated or neg- 
lected you will be surrendered to the Court. 
Probation Officer. 

Under the operation of such a system the State 
is not being humiliated and degraded. It has the 
great vindication that by such means a consider- 
able proportion of criminals, who under the old 
system were lost to society, are being restored to 
social efficiency and saved to the State and to 
themselves. 

An important suggestion in the treatment of 
criminals was made some five years ago by Roland 
B. Molineaux in the provision for a " Court of 
Rehabilitation." (See Charties and the Com- 
mons, September 28, 1907.) Along the line of 
this suggestion Ohio as well as Oklahoma are 
proposing the adoption of such a court. A 
judge and jury has deprived a man of his liberty 
for crime; a judge and jury shall decide his 
case before he is restored to liberty. The mere 
lapse of a few months behind prison walls 
does not in itself change him from a criminal 
to a good citizen. Mere punishment does not 
change character. Without an uplifting motive 
the prison discharges into the community again 
a man as criminal in character as when it received 
40 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

him. Some motive or hope must be held before 
such a one, with the understanding that whether 
society shall regard him citizen or criminal will 
depend upon himself. Society would be glad to 
welcome him back into the ranks of her citizens 
if he will provide her a sufficient safeguard for 
so doing, after he has been adjudged a criminal. 
The court of rehabilitation in the form of judge 
and jury is ready to try his case and determine 
whether he shall be rehabilitated as a citizen. He 
must prepare himself by a change of mind and 
life ; he must bring and argue his own case before 
the court, and its verdict may restore him to 
liberty. Such an arrangement, which has been 
commented upon favorably by the press of the 
country, shows clearly that the mind of society 
concerning the criminal has greatly changed. En- 
lightened society does not seek punishment as a 
vindication and safeguard of government. It 
seeks only reformation, a change of mind, and 
restoration to citizenship. The only justifiable 
criticism of such a scheme will be that which seeks 
to point out provisions which shall provide for the 
manifestation of a changed mind and the demon- 
stration of a new character. These attained, and 
further infliction of pain or privation of liberty 
is without foundation. (Cp. "The Survey," July 
27, 1912, pp. 586, 587.) 

There can be little doubt that into our tradi- 
tional doctrine of atonement in some of its forms 
the Pharisaic doctrine of forgiveness only on the 
41 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ground of the debt being paid has filtered through. 
"According to the Pharisaic theology forgiveness 
of sin was impossible without payment of the debt 
by some one ; if not by the offender, then by some 
one for him, who, by reason of his innocence, did 
not need on his own account to die the death that 
was the penalty of sin, (but) whose submission 
to it would compensate for its remission to the 
guilty. An outward mechanical idea of guilt and 
forgiveness and religion generally underlies this 
scheme. We have here, too, the real root of the 
Catholic doctrine of merit of the saints being 
available to cover the shortcomings of others. 
The Pharisees taught the vicarious righteousness 
of the patriarchs and saints of Israel." (Somer- 
ville, "St. Paul's Conception of Christ," 81, note.) 

This we believe to be a false view, both in its 
direct application of substitution of suffering 
and its indirect application of the substitution of 
righteousness, a foundation for immorality under 
ecclesiastical sanction. Society could forgive the 
past if as a condition the sinner could guarantee 
a good life in the future. In other words, society 
is not benefited in any degree by the mere suffer- 
ing of a penalty, when that penalty is only vin- 
dictiveness and unrelated to security for future 
conduct. 

Jean Valjean, an upright mayor, having been 
a good citizen for many years, can not now secure 
society by imprisonment any better than he is do- 
ing by his useful and exemplary and ministering 
life. His trial and condemnation may be a sad ne- 
42 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

cessity, because human law can not be made for 
each individual case, and impartiality in adminis- 
tration of law is necessary for its sanction. But if 
power is given to a judge to suspend a sentence, 
and exercised in his case, every interest of society 
is conserved that ever can be. Divine government 
is not under the embarrassments and limitations 
which made this case so pathetic. A man in At- 
lanta, Ga., murdered a man many years ago. He 
was not apprehended, but escaped and went into 
a new community, and under a new name settled 
down to a good life. He married and brought up 
a family, and in every way, unrelated to this past 
deed, was a good citizen. After twenty-five years 
his identity as the murderer was discovered. 
He was apprehended and tried, found guilty and 
executed. We think that every one must feel that 
this is a case where law defeats itself in its effort 
to protect society. Society by his execution was 
robbed of a useful citizen, whose good life was 
as much a protection from crime as his execution, 
while the revulsion of feeling against the me- 
chanical exactions of law was more a menace to 
government than any leniency in his case could 
have been. The administration of pardon in his 
case would have been more a sanction to govern- 
ment than his execution. The element that is 
lacking here is such a provision of atonement as 
would have brought the man to confession of 
crime, and such a basis in law as would have made 
pardon possible when a new character had been 
demonstrated. 

43 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

How will the fruits of the atonement relate 
themselves to a future award or judgment? It 
seems to be conceded by some, at least to some 
degree, that the sins that are remitted are rather 
those whose penalties will be paid at the judg- 
ment than those which are involved in the present 
earth-life and its physical conditions; that the 
latter penalties do not seem to be escaped. 

This implies the idea of a Judgment Day, when 
the records will be brought forth and the awards 
made on the ground of the deeds that were done 
in the earth-life. Probably that notion fitted the 
time of Christ better than it does our present day. 
It was an idea inescapable then, because igno- 
rance of physical and moral laws did not bring 
the conviction of absolute certainty in the results 
of righteousness and iniquity. We now know 
enough of the workings of the forces of the world 
to see, as they could not then, that the laws of 
nature, both physical and spiritual, are so ad- 
justed that every deed has its recompense auto- 
matically ; that it is never escaped. Some of the 
illustrations of this are easily recognized; others 
are not so. Rich sinners seem by the use of 
wealth to escape for the present the consequences 
of evil deeds. But we are coming to think that 
this is more seeming than real. Of course, he 
can not escape the operations of physical laws. 
And the workings of moral laws are not so much 
disturbed as they seem; but their effects may be 
rendered unfelt for the time. But this temporary 
insensibility is not eternal, and moreover, the be- 
44 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

numbed sense is itself a most fearful punishment. 
Perdition is destruction of function. So that the 
purpose of the Judgment Day seems for an- 
nouncement and clear revelation rather than for 
award. Living or dead the laws of God are not 
escaped. Men whose outward circumstances are 
happy are not themselves as happy as they seem. 
So it would seem that if the atonement is to 
relieve us of penalty, it must do so now. Its re- 
lease from moral consequence can not be realized 
if it is deferred to a future world. 

The problem of the atonement has tradition- 
ally been treated as a legal problem. In the broad 
sense of law this is justifiable; but it is in the 
sense of social law, and not of that law which 
grew up in the forum which so imperfectly inter- 
prets God's great laws of the universe. So great 
is this distinction that we prefer to say that the 
Cross illustrates a social need, and not a legal 
one, knowing that this distinction would disap- 
pear if our view of law was broad enough. Dale 
(' 'Atonement," 392) says: "It belonged to him 
to assert, by his own act, that suffering is the just 
result of sin. He asserts it, not by inflicting suf- 
fering on the sinner, but by enduring suffering 
himself." "We feel that this author has not made 
out in his previous discussion that justice de- 
mands that "suffering" is the just result of sin — 
abstract suffering, suffering by somebody, a cer- 
tain quantum of suffering irrespective of personal 
deserts. If he has made out a case at all, it is 
45 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

in the form, "The soul that sins, it shall die." 
It is not abstract suffering that is demanded by 
justice, it is the suffering of the sinner. If this 
is the case, then all possibility of transferring 
that suffering to some one else than the sinner, 
and then concluding that the law is satisfied be- 
cause a certain amount of suffering has been en- 
dured, is untenable. 

On the other hand, there is a social constitu- 
tion of the race that makes vicarious suffering 
inevitable. We do not recognize that it is a de- 
mand of justice; we recognize it as an unques- 
tionable empirical fact. It grows out of the fact 
that we are in creation bound together into an 
organism. No man liveth to himself; he is tied 
by vital cords with all others who live, who have 
lived, and who will live. It is evident under this 
social law or fact that if one sins, all suffer. The 
mother suffers for the sin of her daughter, the 
father for the sin of his son, a community for 
the sin of one of its citizens, etc. Jesus could not 
enter into the human organism and not suffer for 
sin, the sin of the world, the sins of past history, 
and the sins of his own time. His example in 
voluntarily taking upon himself suffering through 
sympathy would have its uplifting and healing 
effect upon all that come after him and shall know 
the story of his life and death. This is a per- 
fectly clear implication of the Incarnation. 

This does not, in our judgment, exhaust the 
meaning of Christ's death; but it is a much 
clearer element than the legal one so much dwelt 
46 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

upon. We shall find other elements growing out 
of the positive purpose of his mission and from 
the fact that he was the special representative of 
the Father in an appeal to men, etc. 

Dr. Shedd, whose "History of Soteriology" 
is more a special plea for the Satisfaction theory 
than an impartial history, says : ' ' All true scien- 
tific development of the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment, it is very evident, must take its departure 
from the idea of divine justice. This conception 
is the primary one in the Biblical representation 
of this doctrine." He thinks that Scripture 
phrases "direct the attention of the theologian to 
that side of the divine character and that class 
of divine attributes which are summed up in the 
idea of justice." ("Hist, of Doctrine," ii, 216.) 
This method of establishing a doctrine of the 
atonement consists essentially in replacing social 
law by that of the forum, and the love of a Father 
for his children by an abstraction called justice 
conceived in non-social relations. It is the effort 
of a Father to become reconciled with his children 
in which the heart of the Father is not allowed 
as a deciding factor. It is not surprising that 
with such elements prescribed in the start a very 
successful effort was made in establishing a ju- 
dicial or satisfaction theory of atonement. 

The reconciliation, which we conceive as the 
atonement problem, is primarily and fundamen- 
tally a personal reconciliation. "The intensely 
personal nature of this reconciliation has not been 
47 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

overstated — scarcely, indeed, can it be repre- 
sented in too strong a light. . . . The reconcili- 
ation is not a matter of relation to law or gov- 
ernment ; it is primarily and essentially a matter 
of relation between persons, God and man. . . . 
It is the personal relation that needs to be set 
right, and it is through being right with God that 
men are to be made right with the government of 
God. ' ' ( Clarke, < ' Outline of Christian Theology, » ' 
322.) 

Reconciliation has usually been studied from 
the point of view of law and government. This is 
probably the reason that it has with equal in- 
variability been solved in legal and mechanical 
ways that do injustice to the persons involved. 
There is no third party to be satisfied with the 
terms of reconciliation. If the Father is willing 
and man is willing to enter into terms of renewed 
fellowship, it is hard to see what consideration 
can hinder the re-establishment of that fellowship. 
The " Price paid?" To whom? Blood shed? 
For what purpose? If the two parties, man and 
God, are reconciled to live again in communion, 
who or what shall say them nay? 

The problem of reconciliation, then, is purely 
a personal problem, and many things have been 
dragged into the problem that darken the case 
rather than enlighten it. 

It has been persistently represented that the 

Cross was necessary to the reconciliation of God 

with the world. Dr. Orr says: "On God's side 

also there were obstacles to forgiveness and fel- 

48 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

lowship. Though God loved the world, its sin had 
still to be dealt with. There was a guilt that had 
to be put away, a wrath that rested on the sinner 
(John 3 : 36), a condemnation that had to be lifted 
off (Rom. 8:1). The work of reconciliation on 
God's side is accomplished on the Cross — the 
grandest expression of his love (Rom. 5:8; 
1 John 4:9). God also is reconciled to the world. 
We are no more enemies (Rom. 5:10) in the ob- 
jective sense (cf. Rom. 11:28). What remains 
is for man to appropriate the reconciliation thus 
brought to him, and to be himself reconciled to 
God (2 Cor. 5:20). ("Side-lights on Christian 
Doctrine," 138.) 

To us there seems an absolute lack of sequence 
of thought in this passage. 1. In what sense does 
the death of Jesus reconcile God to man? There 
seems to be on the face of it nothing of a nature 
calculated to do so. On the contrary, if God was 
ever angry at wickedness, this is the time when 
his anger would reach its limit. 2. God has, in- 
deed, to deal Avith sin; but surely in a way that 
will guarantee its cessation. How can that be so 
well done as by a repentance that causes man 
to turn from it and hate it, and a regeneration 
that guarantees power to overcome it? 3. What 
import do words have that speak of a reconcili- 
ation being wrought in God, which has yet to 
be appropriated by man? By the Cross God 
either is or is not reconciled. If reconciled, that 
is a complete transaction; his wrath has no fur- 
ther operation. Man may, indeed, be subjec- 
49 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

tively benefited by recognizing it and acting upon 
it, but that will have nothing to do with God's 
reconciliation if another fact has already accom- 
plished it. Moreover, Dr. Orr's statement lays 
an indestructible foundation for the doctrine of 
universal salvation to which we call attention. 

A deed which pays a debt or meets a legal de- 
mand must be accounted a complete discharge for 
the debt or the crime. There can not in justice 
be any further consideration or reference to the 
obligation. The person for whose benefit the deed 
was performed is now free. If satisfaction for 
the demands of the law is made at all, then Scrip- 
ture and common notions of justice would lead 
to the conclusion that the satisfaction is made for 
all men, and hence all men will be saved. Satis- 
factionists have ever confronted this argument 
and conclusion, and have sought to meet it by an 
appeal to the question of fact, "If Christ died to 
save all, why are not all righteous and full of 
faith?" This plea has been made in the interest 
of a part of humanity, the elect, for whom it is 
claimed that Christ exclusively died. But one 
may with equal logic reply: If Christ died to save 
the elect, why are not the elect fully righteous 
and full of faith? The question presses, because 
it has ever been taught in connection with the 
same school of thinkers that we will never be free 
from sin until we are released from the limita- 
tions of a corruptible and ensnaring fleshly na- 
ture. John Owen, who urges the above argument, 
also declares that one sin will damn. In our own 
50 



WHAT IS KEQUIKED. 

strength no flesh is justified before God. Then 
all our sins are to be covered by Christ's satis- 
faction, or they are not provided for at all. This 
reasoning will shut out the elect from salvation 
as sure — if we must appeal to the fact of life — 
as it will stop short of providing for universal 
salvation. It only shows that atonement on a 
moral basis can not incorporate the satisfaction 
principle. Universalism on the basis of that prin- 
ciple is more logical and more honoring to God 
than any limitation of the saved. 

Atonement is not to be secured by any abro- 
gation or change of law. It is doubtless the phys- 
ical laws concerning evil that manifest the nature 
of sin. This manifestation of the evil of sin must 
be a fundamental cause of repentance. If repent- 
ance is to play such a basic place in atonement as 
we believe, there must be no playing fast and 
loose with the conditions that induce it. If the 
laws of physical being may be manipulated easily, 
now producing one result, and now another, re- 
pentance will become a game of safety merely. 
We will lose conviction concerning the unalterable 
and fundamentally evil nature of sin. We find 
physical laws unbending, even in the presence of 
a changed mind — the same for the saint as for 
the sinner. It is necessary that they should be 
so in the interests of moral government. "I be- 
lieve that no modification of the law as a law, in 
accommodation to man's condition as a sinner, is 
conceivable that could either give the assurance 
of the pardon of sin or quicken us with a new life ; 
51 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

and that all idea of bridging over, by a modified 
law, the gulf which we have been contemplating 
is untenable." (Campbell, " Nature of Atone- 
ment," 25.) 

It is worth while to note, however, that while 
one suffers for his violation of law he may at the 
same time become reconciled to the law-giver. 
Hence the inexorability of law is no barrier to 
reconciliation and atonement, while, as we see 
above, it is an indispensable condition. 

As we are not to receive atonement through 
a narrowly interpreted legal operation, so we are 
not to attain a merely legal standing under law. 
Paul says: "When the fullness of time came, God 
sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under 
the law, that he might redeem them that were 
under the law, that we might receive the adoption 
of sons." (Gal. 4:4, 5.) The purpose and prob- 
lem of atonement is not to rescue sinners from 
the condemnation of some objective rules of con- 
duct; pay the penalty for their transgression, if 
that may be done; and start them out again in a 
justified relation to law, to walk a straight chalk- 
line to some legally justified destination, amid the 
cold conditions of mere sinlessness; but rather 
to enfold them in the warm and sympathetic in- 
fluences of a Divine family. "Therefore, when 
we contemplate the Son of God in our nature, 
dealing on our behalf with the condemnation of 
sin, and the demands for righteousness, which are 
in the law, we are to understand that he is not 
thus honoring in humanity the law of God for the 
52 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

purpose of giving us a perfect legal standing as 
under the law, but for the purpose of taking us 
from under the law, and placing us under grace — 
redeeming us that we may receive the adoption 
of sons. So that not a legal standing, however 
high or perfect, but a filial standing is that 
which is given us in Christ." (Campbell, op. cit. 
59.) 

This will not contradict the other thought, that 
we are not to find atonement by a change of law: 
for the purpose of that change would be to give 
us a standing under law, even if our necessities 
required a new law under which we could stand. 
We will attain not the place of an accused, legally 
acquitted, but the broader relationships of mem- 
bership in the great family of God. 

The atonement is the product of a social rather 
than of a legal necessity. Not the rights of ab- 
stract law, a mental and disembodied system, but 
the anguish of the children of the Divine family 
moved the atoning forces to the rescue. "There 
is in the Vatican Museum a marble group, the 
work of some ancient Greek sculptor. It tells in 
stone a story of love and sacrifice. The two sons 
of a priest, playing by the shore, were set upon 
by two huge serpents which came out of the sea. 
The father, aroused by the screams of his chil- 
dren, hurried to their rescue. He grappled the 
monsters undauntedly and struggled with desper- 
ate energy to free his sons from their coils, but 
in vain. They wound their slimy forms around 
the father and boys, crushed them to death, and 
53 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

dragged them into the depths of the sea." 
(Ascham, "Help from the Hills," 230.) 

So our Father could not see his children in the 
toils of the serpent without rushing to their res- 
cue. And as the father in the Laocoon, so our 
Father could not escape being enfolded in the 
coils of the same serpent — not in the sins, but in 
the consequences of them — as his children. But 
unlike the Laocoon father, he does not fail of 
rescue. The serpent has his triumph ; but the ex- 
hibition of love is mighty enough to rescue the 
children. They yield themselves in love to one 
who was willing to suffer and die for them. 

We conceive the work of the Redeemer as a 
single, undivided act, the outcome of a definite 
pre-incarnate decision from before the foundation 
of the world. His whole career was a unity, al- 
though one that had its development; but it was 
a harmonious and altogether consistent develop- 
ment. We do not conceive that he faced a differ- 
ent problem at any time in his life from the total 
problem of his incarnation. When Gethsem- 
ane came he, indeed, came nearer to a certain 
culmination, a certain crisis, but the work before 
him was consonant with that which he had been 
engaged in all through his career. His death 
was but the culmination, the goal of his incarna- 
tion determination, and had in it no different 
benefit than the total of his life-work. It was not 
an act apart from all the rest, having a special 
and specific benefit for mankind. However much 
higher it may have risen in courage, in suffering, 
54 



WHAT IS REQUIRED. 

in endurance, it was for the same purpose that 
his total incarnation history was — the bringing 
back of man to his Father. Sabatier says, con- 
cerning this point: ''Jesus began to give his life 
when he entered upon his ministry ; he ended giv- 
ing it on the cross. The external acts are differ- 
ent ; the cause which produces them, namely, faith 
and love, is the same from one end to the other. ' ' 
("The Doctrine of the Atonement," 38. He is 
commenting on Mark 10:45.) 

This view of Christ's atoning work, as greater 
than the suffering on Calvary because it included 
that and all the rest of his ministering and suffer- 
ing life, is not open to those who do not accept 
the pre-existence of Christ. They must be shut 
up to the estimate of each act just as it occurs 
in his life. His birth from that point of view was 
not the result of his own volition. This distinc- 
tion will enable us to see the full value of the doc- 
trine of his pre-existence in the exaltedness of his 
being, while at the same time it will enable us to 
see the broader sweep of the pre-temporal choice 
over any action or volition of his historical life. 
"His whole life was not simply occupied with a 
series of decisions crucial for our race, or filled 
with a great deed then first done ; but that life of 
his was itself the obverse of a heavenly eternal 
deed, and the result of a timeless decision before 
it here began. . . . His sacrifice began before 
he came into the world, and his cross was that of 
a lamb slain before the world's foundation. 
There was a Calvary above which was the mother 
55 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of it all. His obedience, however impressive, does 
not take divine magnitude if it first rose upon 
earth, nor has it the due compelling power upon 
us. His obedience as man was but the detail of 
the supreme obedience which made him man. . . . 
He consented not only to die, but to be born. It 
was all one obedience. And it was free." (For- 
syth, op. cit. 271.) 






56 



Chapter II. 

THE LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

Ofttimes the problem of atonement is exagger- 
ated. Primarily, at least, it is but the reconcili- 
ation of two persons — God and man. The evil of 
the past life, an objective fact, is not thereby re- 
paired. There is the awful product of sin, stand- 
ing, it may be, as an everlasting warning. It can 
not be undone; it is not indispensable that its 
devastation be removed in order for an at-one- 
ment. 

Reconciliation does imply forgiveness of the 
sinner. The separating feeling must be removed. 
But we often speak of the forgiveness of sins, the 
blotting out of sins, etc., as though something hap- 
pened to undo those past deeds. This is a careless 
generalization. The sins remain as committed — 
more than a mere record or a memory. If a mem- 
ory, we may conceive that they may be forgotten ; 
yet at-one-ment is not dependent upon that as an 
intellectual fact. The sins themselves, if we think 
of them objectively at all, can never be changed, 
now that they are done. Their results, outside of 
the personal relations involved, are not neces- 
sarily removed by the fact of reconciliation, al- 
though among God's forces in nature and spirit 
57 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

there are remedial agencies, tending to repair 
and reconstruction. 

Restitution is a duty, a consequence of recon- 
ciliation, but hardly a condition demanded on 
which it rests. If we become loyal again, we will 
remove, as far as possible, all the results damag- 
ing to him whom we wronged. But his forgive- 
ness will precede this effort, and not wait for it. 
Then there are many senses in which we are quite 
unable to restore matters brought about by our 
sins. Our God, against whom we have sinned, 
stands injured forever. This is the awful nature 
of sin; it can never be undone. 

There are certain authors who seem to hold 
that reconciliation is impossible without a full 
restitution or a plan by which the evil of sin is 
entirely removed or repaired. Dinsmore says: 
" Forgiveness is not reconciliation. The latter is 
a far more comprehensive word. Complete rec- 
onciliation, we have learned, is impossible unless 
both the injured and the injurer see that good has 
come out of the evil done, or else have so strong 
a faith in an overruling Providence as to believe 
that the evil is caught up into God's redemptive 
purpose and will be made to serve his ends." 
( ' ' Atonement in Literature and Life, ' ' 192. ) This 
might be true if sinful deeds were the subject of 
reconciliation. One could never be reconciled con- 
cerning a deed unless it produced good, and not 
evil. One might be reconciled with it, finally, if 
its last effect were compensatory for its first ap- 
parent evil. However, we are not dealing with 
58 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

deeds, but with persons. Reconciliation with a 
person might be similar to that with a deed, if the 
attitude of the person were unchanging, as that 
of a given deed always must be. But a person 
may repudiate a deed, come to abhor it, apologize 
for it, change his mind concerning it, and because 
of this facility of change of attitude in a person, 
reconciliation with him is possible. Both parties, 
recognizing the endlessly evil nature of a deed 
committed by one of them, yet may be reconciled 
when the sinner is repentant. Forgiveness of the 
sinner on the ground of repentance may produce 
reconciliation with him without one ever being 
reconciled with his deed. Reconciliation with the 
sinner looks to the future ; reconciliation with his 
deed looks to the past. Repentance is the word 
which spells the difference between present char- 
acter which may be justified and past deeds which 
can not. 

The question whether sin is forgivable in the 
sense of the removal of its consequences seems 
hardly to have received its final answer. George 
Fox has a celebrated passage which breathes a 
hope of complete recovery. He says : "And I saw 
that there was an Ocean of Darkness and Death; 
but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love flowed 
over the Ocean of Darkness; and I saw in that 
the infinite Love of God." Robert Browning's 
optimistic lines seem to allow the immediate loss, 
while breathing the certainty of final triumph of 
God's love over evil: 

59 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

My hope is that a sun will pierce 

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 

That after Last returns the First, 

Though a wide compass round be fetched; 

That what began best can't end worst, 

Nor what God blessed once prove accurst. 

Some make out a pretty good case of the idea 
that sin automatically brings its own punishment. 
Even ardent preachers of repentance, when they 
come to preach from such a text as, " Whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap," make out 
a pretty strong case against the remission of any 
sin. One says: "God does not save us from the 
consequences, but he educates us by them. Time 
wall bring around the harvest of your own acts. 
. . . Tragedy is not washed out by tears. We 
may err in judgment and repent, and yet suffer 
the consequences of our act. It is the inevitable 
law of God. We may err in judgment and throw 
ourselves off a cliff. Nature does not reverse her 
law T of gravitation to protect us from harm. It 
is inevitable that if we break the law we must 
suffer the consequences." 

Dr. John Young ("The Life and Light of 
Men") has made out a rather troublesome argu- 
ment, to which Dr. Dale ("Atonement," 320) 
makes the following concession: "I do not regard 
the remission of sins as being absolutely identical 
with the escape from the penalties of sin. Sin is 
sometimes forgiven, although some of the penal- 
ties of sin are not recalled. But the remission 
of sin must be understood to include the cancel- 
60 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

ling at least of the severest penalties with which 
unforgiven sin is visited." 

This seems to admit that repentant sin may 
itself be punished to a degree, but not so severely 
as unrepentant sin. That distinction might shed 
some light ; but the question still remains : Is the 
whole penalty of sin ever removed through for- 
giveness? That various passages of Scripture 
might be quoted in the affirmative is possible ; but 
were they written with this specific question in 
mind, and if their answer should be accepted, 
could we not marshal other texts in contradiction 1 ? 
If we look for our answer to actual observation 
of life, our answer will probably be in the nega- 
tive. 

Is not the following discrimination enlighten- 
ing? Forgiveness of sin restores the sinner to 
fellowship with the Father. That is as far as it 
directly goes. Whatever is involved in remittance 
of penalty by this restored fellowship must be a 
consequence of forgiveness ; but it is possible that 
in many cases Grod leaves his child to suffer the 
consequences of his action, while he takes him to 
his heart with sympathy. Forgiveness does not 
restore a part of us which has been lost by sin, 
as an arm, or an eye, or a mental ability, or even 
a spiritual power once lost. It does not undo the 
consequences of sin by which we lost years of de- 
velopment under the laws of life. ' ' The bird with 
a broken pinion never soars so high again. ' ' The 
wasted life of a man is not restored by a forgive- 
ness which he may receive when he is old. Indeed, 
61 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

it is hard to bring to our minds any restoration 
through forgiveness. 

God takes us up to his heart and fellowship; 
we make a new start, and may make rapid prog- 
ress in gaining what was lost — even Nature shows 
great restorative powers ; but this seems to be the 
limit. We never become under the blessing of 
forgiveness just what we might have been, with 
the same exertion as we now make. 

Adam as represented by Milton ''was not 
chiefly solicitous for his own salvation (charac- 
ter). The horror of his deed was the woe entailed 
upon unborn generations." Dante was troubled 
about an atonement for the conscience and the 
memory. For the memory, we must hold, there 
is none ; for the conscience there is reconciliation 
by insight into the workings of character's change 
through repentance and regeneration. 

Dinsmore places before us the hypothetical 
case of the Prodigal Son having a younger 
brother, whom he had led away with him, but who 
did not return with him. Could there be a recon- 
ciliation until that boy returned? 

Atonement, taken in all its implications, in- 
cludes the new mind and nature. This will impel 
the Prodigal to go and rescue his younger brother, 
if he can ; to undo any evil he may have done. But 
the atonement, as we know it, does not guarantee 
that the evil will be undone, even when we have 
done our best. We may never be able to escape 
regret for the evil that we did. It is hardly true 
to the facts that reconciliation requires it. Dins- 
62 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

more affirms (op. cit. 224) that "any explanation 
of how at-one-ment with God is achieved that 
leaves out of account cosmical evil and all that it 
means to us is woefully provincial. ' ' This is go- 
ing farther than anything we know from Scrip- 
ture or from any other source justifies us. Cer- 
tainly the following statement places forgiveness 
on a wrong basis: "In the 'Paradise Lost' God 
forgives Adam because he knows his own divine 
purpose is not thwarted. Were he impotent in 
the midst of a ruined world, defeated in his cher- 
ished designs, while sin rioted in wild triumph, 
then perfect forgiveness and reconciliation would 
have been a very different matter. ' ' We dare to 
say that such a calculating forgiveness would 
have been unworthy of God, and also that God 
has actually forgiven man amid the wreck of sin 
to which history testifies. 

"God forgives sin, but Nature never does." 
This was the impassioned exclamation of an evan- 
gelist while preaching from the text, "Whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ' ' The 
truth that seemed to be contained in the state- 
ment obscured the inconsistency of making such 
a distinction between what God does and what 
Nature does : for Nature is nothing but the method 
of God's activity. It can contain nothing that is 
foreign to his will or work. 

The justification for the statement is the effort 
to correct the too sweeping portrayals of evan- 
gelical preachers for many a decade that God's 
forgiveness unmakes the fact and consequences 
63 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of sin. Such sweeping statements of the effect 
of forgiveness have been so oft indulged in that a 
hearer would suppose that a godly or righteous 
life were of little significance if only an oppor- 
tunity for forgiveness were afforded before this 
life should close. It is a grave, practical question 
whether such preaching has not rendered an 
actual contribution to unrighteousness in giving 
the impression that its effects may be utterly re- 
moved. The moral government is represented as 
a rather flabby thing, and that men may some- 
what easily escape the penalty — all the penalty 
of misdeeds, knowingly, triflingly, willfully com- 
mitted. Whether such an inference is bound up 
with the doctrine of the atonement is a question 
of the greatest practical importance. If, on the 
one hand, we shall find that moral government is 
not with impunity to be tampered with, and thus 
the sweeping statements about an atonement must 
be guarded, on the other hand we have that which 
more than compensates in the greater sanctions 
of the moral law, which it is not the will of God 
to undermine by the provisions of reconciliation 
with man. 

Herbert Spencer said, "Nature accepts no ex- 
cuses." He evidently has in mind that cosmic 
structure in which there is an exact sequence of 
cause and effect. In that structure the only atone- 
ment known is the atonement of changed action. 
God is different from that "structure" in that he 
may notice a changed mind as a factor in changed 
personal relations. But it is going beyond the 
64 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

known to affirm that God has arranged that a 
changed mind shall have any effect, aside from 
accompanying changed action, in the sequence of 
cause and effect. 

Somerville rightly arraigns the doctrine of im- 
munity from the penalty of sin through atonement 
in the following thorough fashion : ' ' Since the re- 
vival of Pauline doctrine at the Eeformation it 
has been customary to speak of the death of Christ 
as a vicarious punishment inflicted upon him, in- 
stead of upon us, by the Father, in order to satisfy 
his justice in remitting our sins. Theologians 
have magnified the significance of his death as a 
divine infliction by representing it as designed to 
take the place of the death that would otherwise 
have been visited by God on sinners themselves. 
But the difficulty about this explanation, in its 
only intelligible form, is that the intended effect 
has not followed; for men, believers and non- 
believers alike, do in point of fact die still, and 
Christ's death has not exhausted God's judgment 
on sin, and has not relieved any from death as 
the punishment of it in their own persons." 
("Paul's Conception of Christ," 89.)* 



*Professor Borden P. Bowne says: "The moral life is seen 
to involve two elements: relations of will and a set of organic 
consequences." Forgiveness is the complacent adjustment of 
the relations of will. One may be forgiven by another for an 
evil deed. "But this would not end the matter; for in the 
other field of law and outcome, forgiveness does not cancel con- 
sequences. The spendthrift may be forgiven, but property is 
gone. . . . We can begin again, but never at the beginning; 
we must start from where we are." ("Studies in Christianity," 
150, 152, 170.) 

65 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

"If the meaning of sin is moral ruin, we shall 
never be punished for our sins. It becomes clear 
that we are punished by our sins." (Ascham, 
"Help from the Hills," 229.) And John Young 
("Life and Light of Men") affirms that the power 
of law is self-executing ; sin automatically has its 
own punishment. The forgiveness of God is not 
the disjointing of moral cause and consequence, 
any more than it is the disjointing of physical 
cause and consequence. Such a disjointing would 
not spell salvation, but perdition, not only for 
men and the earth, but for God and the heavens. 
This wonderful world, so wisely and benevolently 
made, pronounced good by its Creator, is not to 
be so anarchized that it shall happen that un- 
righteousness shall produce bliss or that right- 
eousness shall produce misery. Such a revolu- 
tion of moral sequences can not be effected in the 
interest of any of God's creatures. If the prob- 
lem of the atonement demands it, then it is better 
that that problem forever remain unsolved. 
Man's salvation can not be purchased by some- 
thing worse than his perdition, and the destruc- 
tion of the foundations of righteousness for all 
other moral beings. 

There is something irrevocable about sin. We 
misunderstand atonement if we ever view it as 
a means of its undoing. The following lines from 
a non-Christian writer present a truth of world- 
life which is a distinct factor in any problem 
which Christianity must solve. 
66 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

The moving finger writes; and having writ, 
Moves on ; not all your piety nor wit 
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 

("Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," lxxxi.) 

Doubtless the most marvelous picture of en- 
during love ever painted is that by Hosea. His 
love for his wife can not be destroyed by her in- 
famous conduct. He follows her into the depths 
and brings her back. But even this love can not 
undo the loss. He brings her back not to be his 
wife — at least not immediately. The past forbids 
that. Invincible distinctions between right and 
wrong forbid it. The loss is irretrievable, even 
though love will not leave her to her sin. 

This is intended to be a picture of Jehovah's 
relation to Israel. The sequel showed that the 
loss there was irretrievable. Israel is destroyed 
from being the wife of Jehovah — and it was a 
forever destruction. Israel never came back to 
the old relations. Tennyson makes King Arthur 
say to Guinevere: 

"And all is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I 

Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God 

Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest. 

I can not touch thy lips, they are not mine, 
But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the king's. 
I can not take thy hand: that too is flesh, 
And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, 
67 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

Here looking down on thine polluted, cries 

'I loathe thee:' yet not less, Guinevere, 

For I was ever virgin save for thee, 

My love through flesh hath wrought into my life 

So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. 

Let no man dream hut that I love thee still. 

Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, 

And so thou lean on our fair Father Christ, 

Hereafter in that world where all are pure 

We two may meet before high God, and thou 

Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know 

I am thy husband — not a smaller soul, 

Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, 

I charge thee, my last hope." 

After he is gone, Guinevere feels the same ir- 
retrievable past: 

"His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord, the King, 

My own true lord! how dare I call him mine? 

The shadow of another cleaves to me, 

And makes me one pollution: he, the king, 

Called me polluted: shall I kill myself? 

What help in that? I can not kill my sin, 

If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame; 

No, nor by living can I live it down. 

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, 

The months will add themselves and make the years, 

The years will roll into centuries, 

And mine will ever be a name of scorn." 

Says E. S. Lewis in Sunday School Journal, 
April, 1913, p. 289: ''Many a sin is doubtless com- 
mitted under the delusion that forgiveness will 
68 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

wipe it out. In fact we know nothing of a pardon 
that undoes the past. ' What is written is written. ' 
The most dangerous doctrine that could be 
preached is that sin and its consequences are ob- 
literated by pardon. There is no warrant for this 
either in Scripture or experience. Never forget 
the portentous words, 'Be not deceived; God is 
not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap. ' These solemn words no doc- 
trine of pardoning grace nullifies for a moment. 
Esau repented, but his lost birthright came not 
back. He earnestly desired to inherit the bless- 
ing, but 'he was rejected; for he found no place 
for a change of mind in his father, though he 
sought it diligently with tears.' King David's 
penitence for his awful sin found expression in 
the most humble and tender words that ever 
voiced the feelings of a broken heart, and God 
answered them Avith his pardon. Yet Nathan told 
David that because he had done this wickedness 
the sword should never depart from his house, 
and it never did. Though David made his peace 
with God, the consequences of his sin marched 
straight on to the dreadful humiliation and suffer- 
ing of the aged king under the frightful outrages 
of Absalom. It is a terrible thing to make light 
of sin, and we do make light of it when we slight 
or ignore its inevitable consequences. As long as 
cause produces effect, and memory recalls the 
past, and habit binds us in its strong cords, so 
long must we realize that it is an exceeding evil 
and bitter thing to sin against God. The sinner 
69 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

can be pardoned, but he can never be innocent 
again. Even the forgiven sin stands recorded on 
the deathless page, and this record is a part of 
the things that are." 

Dinsmore affirms that "the irrevocableness of 
the past is one of George Eliot's fundamental 
teachings. A sin once launched into the world 
leaves a trail of blood and tears which can neither 
be forgotten nor effaced. A breach once made 
can not be repaired. The reconciliation of Arthur 
Dinnithorne and Adam Bede is only a friendly 
union hallowed by a common sorrow. . . . Such 
measure of reconciliation as is possible, ... is 
won by repentance, confession, and a suffering 
energy repairing in some degree the evil done. 
Arthur's last words were: 'But you told me a 
truth when you said to me once, ' ' There 's a sort 
of wrong that can never be made up for." ' " 
(Op. cit. 121-2.) George Eliot does not 

forecast the years, 
And find in loss a gain to match, 
Or reach a hand through time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears. 

She does not say with Tennyson: 

0, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill. 



That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete. 
70 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

Faith may, if it sees a motive, believe in the 
larger "hope," expressed by Tennyson. We will 
not chide the hope; we only affirm that, so far as 
our knowledge of human life goes, no foundation 
is laid for it in the known. 

Can sin committed be made a source of good? 
Dinsmore seems to answer in the affirmative ; for 
he says (p. 241) : "For a true soul every fall may 
become a fall upward, every loss may be made to 
produce a high result in gain." He thinks that 
Milton in "Paradise Eegained" has answered the 
question in the same way. "The schools have 
taught expiation by suffering, a divine wrath ap- 
peased by torture, the pain of one accepted by 
a legal fiction for the condemnation of many. 
Milton opens a sunnier, healthier region of 
thought. To make forgiveness rational, there 
must, indeed, be a satisfaction given both to jus- 
tice and to love; but it is no legal fiction that is 
offered — a real amendment is made; the hurt of 
sin is healed; its direful consequences are changed 
to good. 

"... There must be a social and cosmic 
atonement, an actual repair of the havoc of sin, 
else the individual whose sins have polluted the 
stream of humanity and entailed suffering upon 
others can never have an untormenting conscience 
or a tranquil memory. His 'Lethe' is the insight 
of faith into the nature of God and the complete 
divine victory over all evil." (114.) 

The question is fundamental ; the answer given 
above seems a triumph of God in history. We 
71 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

believe that history proves it false. Sin is an eter- 
nal loss. The above answer rests upon the fact 
of the advantages gained by the introduction of 
the new forces of the incarnation. Sin's apparent 
benefits rest on the assumption that without it 
the incarnation would never have been a factor 
in human perfection. This assumption, as we be- 
lieve, is insecurely founded. 

This idea that sin may be taken up into the 
Divine plan and become the occasion, if not the 
cause, of good is based upon the absolute sover- 
eignty of God. But if God were an absolute Sov- 
ereign there would be no such thing as sin, or else 
God himself would be its Author: for where ab- 
solute sovereignty is exercised, every thing that 
is is its product. If there is such a thing as ab- 
solute sovereignty, then why do we blame Judas 
for enacting his part in the divine program? why 
do we condemn Pilate for consigning the Christ 
to the cross in such a cowardly and wicked man- 
ner? Indeed, this assumption confuses all moral 
judgments by assuming that whatever was done 
in history was accomplished by the divine pur- 
pose. God thus seems to be behind all moral ac- 
tions, even those which we have been accustomed 
to call extremely wicked. 

The Biblical position concerning this question 
seems to be: Before the creation of man God 
was, indeed, the undisturbed and undisputed Ab- 
solute. By his own volition he limited this ab- 
solute sovereignty in his decision to bring into 
being other moral beings in his own likeness and 
72 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

image, who, if moral at all, must be free ; and if 
free, must have a realm, either large or small, 
where they may be sovereign. This human sov- 
ereignty, however small the area of its exercise, 
implies that in that area God as Sovereign is ex- 
cluded until man by his free volition bids him 
come in and rule. And when he accepts this in- 
vitation he does not thereby establish absolute 
Sovereignty or destroy man's; for God remains 
only while man wills it, and retires when man 
bids it. Thus it will be seen that the theoretical 
sovereignty assumed as a starting point for 
thought comes to an end when God brings into 
life another being, who, to be like himself, is also 
a sovereign. In the nature of the case there can 
not be two absolute sovereigns in the same area. 
God, then, does not have his way ; sin is not taken 
up into the divine plan, but remains forever ex- 
ternal to it; remains forever the wicked and evil 
thing that it is; remains forever an obstruction 
to the Divine goodness and plan. The author of 
it must forever bear its awful burden, in so far 
as it can not be overcome consistently with the 
structure of the universe, the natures of God and 
man. We believe that Judas and Pilate and the 
Jews, in clamoring for the crucifixion of Jesus, 
were unlimitedly and responsibly wicked and had 
nothing to do with carrying out the Divine plan. 
They stood in the way of it. They hindered it 
with all their sovereign power. They, and not 
God, are responsible for his crucifixion. Any 
other wicked event, which God within the field of 
73 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

his own sovereignty may so overrule as to save 
from utter wreckage, rests its awful burden of 
condemnation upon him who does it. God has no 
program which involves the necessity of sin. 

So wickedness remains wicked; its results 
never are good, but always represent the thing 
that God would not have. We can never excuse 
the sinner with the thought that he has been the 
occasion of good. The good would have been 
greater if God had had his way. The fruit of sin 
is eternally a subtraction from potential good. 

Such an event as the elevation of Joseph to 
power after his brothers had sold him into slavery 
does not prove that sin is a source or cause of 
good. Joseph's elevation was a result of Jo- 
seph's virtue; only his slavery was causally con- 
nected with the wickedness of his brothers. What 
would have happened to them both if they had 
not sinned is entirely hidden from our view and 
can not enter into our argument. On general 
principles we are amply justified in believing that 
goodness leads to welfare and that evil is not a 
necessary link in the program of God. 

Campbell ("Nature of the Atonement," 136) 
presents a puzzle, the analysis of which may en- 
able us to see added light on our subject of the 
atonement's limitation. He presents to us the 
"supposition that all the sin of man had been 
committed by one human spirit, and that spirit, 
preserving its personal identity, and retaining 
the memory of what it had been, should become 
perfectly righteous. Had such a case been pos- 
74 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

sible, how would the righteous God deal with such 
a spirit? In the language of Luther, sin and 
righteousness being met in one person, which 
would prevail! Would the absolute repentance 
and sorrow for the past sin, which is necessarily 
implied in the present righteousness, be an atone- 
ment for that past sin and leave the righteous 
God free to receive that present righteous with 
the favor due it, or would justice call for venge- 
ance? This would be a perplexing dilemma, on 
the assumption of the correctness of the theory 
of divine justice that represents that attribute 
of God as a necessity of the divine nature which 
necessitates the giving to every spirit that which 
is righteously due it — which, in this case, would 
imply the necessity both to punish the past sin 
and reward the present righteousness, and this 
forever — an impossible combination." 

I suppose that one element of this dilemma is 
the assumption that an atonement is to do some- 
thing for our past, which is not actually in the 
problem, as we think. It may relieve the puzzle 
a little to remind ourselves that we are dealing 
with a person, and not with an abstraction called 
"sins." A person's deserts are simple, and not 
thus complex. If he is righteous, he may be 
treated as righteous. His relation to a sinful past 
is that of repudiation. The past is irredeemable ; 
it can not be undone; it can not be made to be 
right ; for it is not like a commercial transaction, 
where a debt, a concrete thing, may be paid. It 
is simply something which ought not to have 
75 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

been, and nothing can now be done which can 
make it something which ought to have been. A 
sin is an eternal loss as soon as committed, and 
nothing can be done with it or with the person 
who committed it that can change it into a neu- 
tral thing or a moral gain. So we may lay that 
consideration to one side as an impossible prob- 
lem. 

"The mill will never grind with the water 
that is past." (MacCallum.) 

What remains that can be done? What shall 
be done with the person ! How shall he be treated 
in the interest of the universe, of society, of Di- 
vine rights? 

In the interest of society he should publicly 
repudiate his sin and accept a new righteous life. 
Without this, evil conduct will seem to have been 
as meritorious as good conduct. Hence without 
this he should rest under condemnation and its 
attendant misery and pain. 

By this repudiation the past rights of Deity 
are not repaired, nor is there any possible way 
by which they may be, so far as we can see. For- 
giveness does not right them; punishment does 
not repair them. It would seem that sin for God 
is an eternal loss, and Deity himself must eter- 
nally wear the scar that was made. But this be- 
ing granted, what of the future ? Death or punish- 
ment of the sinner is but a further loss even to 
Deity, it being conceded that Deity has an inter- 
est in the sinner. Forgiveness, on the ground of 
repudiation of sin and an accepted new life, seems 
76 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

to conserve all that has not been irremediably 
lost by sin already committed. 

What, then, is the work of Jesus in bringing 
about this restoration? It is in securing the re- 
pentance, the change of mind, which leads to the 
repudiation and new life accepted. He accom- 
plishes all that the case admits after sin has done 
its wrecking. All other workings seem a conjury 
of the imagination, arising from a false view of 
the demands of God as just. 

The ''Scarlet Letter" sets forth with great 
power the necessity of confession in the person 
of Mr. Dimmesdale, and of suffering in the per- 
son of Hester Prynne. "Hester had committed 
a sin which militated against the social well-being. 
Society is righteous in the condemnation of the 
sin, and can not fully forgive her until she is no 
longer in any degree representative of it. Re- 
pentance and confession but partially release her. 
She is still associated with it. Its nature will be 
judged by its painful effects upon her. If she 
lives a life of luxurious ease, her sin will appear 
but a soft infirmity, and not the destructive thing 
that it is. Thus does Hester propitiate the right- 
eous recoil of her social world from her by a suf- 
fering, benevolent life which robs sin of all its 
fascination and transforms her character into a 
source of light, and not darkness, and sets in 
motion numberless currents of good." (Dins- 
more, op. cit. 130.) 

This illustration shows vividly that reconcili- 
ation is based not only upon the repentance of 
77 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the offender, but also assumes the power of the 
offended to know the depth and sincerity of the 
repentance. In the case of society this latter 
power is strictly limited, and hence reconciliation 
is based upon certain conventional and outward 
safeguards. But God knows the heart of the sin- 
ner ; his forgiveness may be as free and as prompt 
as his knowledge of repentance is complete. 

The idea of unlimited atonement is negatived 
by a teaching of Jesus that forgiveness of sins 
is morally conditioned, not only by repentance at 
the moment, but by future conduct. "If ye for- 
give men their trespasses, your heavenly Father 
will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men 
their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Fa- 
ther forgive your trespasses." (Matt. 6: 14, 15.) 
That this law may be applied to the future as 
well as the present is shown by the parable of the 
Ungrateful Servant. (Matt. 18: 23-35.) In that 
case the servant was forgiven; but when he 
turned upon his fellow-servant and would inflict 
a punishment from which he by grace had just 
escaped, the forgiveness was withdrawn by the 
king, and he was held exactly to the full original 
debt. This suggests that forgiveness represents 
a sort of suspended sentence, hanging over one 
during good behavior. Every relationship of 
justification is manifested while we show forth 
the spirit of Him who forgave us. No reproach 
for a past, now inescapable, is heaped upon us. 
But a certain humility and self-distrust is the 
appropriate demeanor of the forgiven sinner that 
78 



LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 

would not be expected in the case of one who 
had never sinned. It is very clear that trans- 
gressions change one's status with the Father, 
even though one may be forgiven. The comment 
that life makes upon this is that when one falls 
from a status of grace, he returns to the identical 
mode of sinful life that he practiced before he 
was forgiven and taken into Divine fellowship. 
"We will need to say little of that limitation 
of the atonement which has been attached to the 
doctrine known as Calvinistic, which limitation 
was in regard to the number of those who were 
intended to receive its benefits. That doctrine 
has been the cause of an age-long battle in the 
theological field. Probably no influential thinker 
in the world now holds it. It may be believed in 
some belated and benighted corner of the earth; 
but even there it will disappear when that de- 
prived section shall come into contact with the 
present world's thought. That doctrine has been 
routed from the field not by exegesis, which 
usually leaves such contests a drawn battle, but 
rather by the estimate which the Christian con- 
sciousness of the world places upon the character 
of God. When clearly stated that limitation is 
repudiated as inconsistent with God's love, which 
must be universal if it is love at all, and incon- 
sistent with the sense of justice which, it is be- 
lieved, must be found in the character of God in 
an ideally perfect degree. Whatever atonement 
is available for one, we may well believe, is avail- 
able for all. If we may found our hopes on God's 
79 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

atonement at all, we need not hesitate in accept- 
ing its universality. 

The elimination of the idea of substitution 
changes the point of view in this discussion and 
renders much that is said inapt. If Christ suf- 
fered instead of persons, then it is a most vital 
point to determine just who those persons are. 
The whole matter seems to turn on that which is 
in the Divine Mind and purpose. But if Christ 
died on behalf of men in an effort to bring about 
a reconciliation of them to God, then the attitude 
of the Divine seems more general, and the issue 
turns more emphatically on the human response 
to the Divine effort, or proposition, or proffer. 
The universality or partiality of the atonement 
still remains of immeasurable importance ; but it 
would hardly ever occur to any one to question 
its general character. It so throws the responsi- 
bility upon human acceptance and appropriation 
that it is a gratuitous difficulty to imagine that 
God takes any responsibility for shutting any one 
out of its benefits. 



80 



Chapter III. 

THE VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

"God so loved the world that he gave his Son." 
It was the love of God that caused the loss to him 
of his Son. If two persons are bound together 
by the bond of love, then when one surfers the 
other must also. It is impossible that one should 
be indifferent while the other is suffering loss. 
So the law of the vicarious must be as wide- 
reaching as love. There is only one imaginable 
place where it does not operate ; that place is Hell, 
the only place known to us where love does not 
operate. Even when the love is not reciprocal, 
where one person loves but is not loved in return, 
there the loving must suffer along with the loved. 
The Cross is a perfect symbol of this vicarious 
bond. It does not really create an obligation to 
love; it only reveals it. That obligation rests 
upon the fact that God is love — just as really be- 
fore the Cross as afterwards. It only creates a 
new condition for us. We know the love of God 
afterwards as we did not before; we know the 
eternal bond which binds him to us. So the ob- 
ligation is manifested. If we could have known 
it without the Cross, as we now know it, it would 
be hard to see from this point of view that the 
cross was a necessity: for we hold that we are 
81 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

not redeemed by suffering, as a price paid to jus- 
tice, but by love, to the manifestation of which 
the Cross gave the supreme occasion. There may 
be other reasons for the Cross which will be mani- 
fested in other relations ; but we now find a suffi- 
cient reason for it in the manifestation of the vi- 
carious principle that God could not be bound to 
us by love without suffering for our sins. Such 
suffering could not be penal suffering ; it is sym- 
pathetic. ' ' Let my reader endeavor to realize the 
thought: The Sufferer suffers what he suffers 
just through seeing sin and sinners with God's 
eyes and feeling in reference to them with God's 
heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God 
in causing such a Divine experience in humanity 
inflicting a punishment? There can be but one 
answer." (Campbell, ''Nature of the Atone- 
ment," 102.) 

Christ suffered on account of the sins of the 
world just because he knows the nature of sin, 
and that there is a dire experience to the sinner. 
To suffer so is not the imposition of an outside 
will. He could suffer most because he was most 
sympathetic. It is in this sense that he bears 
our sins, and not in the sense that their penalty 
is placed upon him arbitrarily, and by that impo- 
sition lifted from the soul of the sinner. The 
whole thought of substitutionary suffering shifts 
the nature of the transaction, and so severs us 
from Jesus Christ as to destroy the greatest con- 
solation of the Incarnation. By this same sym- 
pathetic bond Jesus suffers now for the sins of 
82 



VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

the world; and yet it is absurd to say that he 
must suffer eternally the penalty of sins. "In 
Jesus of Nazareth the Eternal Word felt the 
pangs of the Cross. But that three hours of pain 
was not a spasm ending in unbroken joy. It was 
symbolical of a perpetual feeling. What Jesus 
experienced in spiritual revulsion from sin, and 
its suffering on its behalf, is a revelation of an 
unchanging consciousness in God. . . . There 
was a Cross in the heart of God before there was 
one planted on the green hill outside of Jerusa- 
lem. And now that the cross of wood has been 
taken down, the one in the heart of God abides, 
and it will remain so long as there is a sinful 
soul for whom to suffer." (Dinsmore, "Atone- 
ment in Literature and Life," 232-3.) 

The vicarious principle everywhere abounds. 
Is it the same as the substitutional 1 ? Is it the same 
to suffer sympathetically for a person as to suffer 
legally in the stead of a person? Evidently there 
is some synonymity or identity; but there is also 
some difference. We can sometimes suffer phys- 
ically instead of another; we can transfer their 
inevitable suffering to ourselves. But we can not 
transfer their moral sufferings to ourselves. If 
one has done wrong and suffers the condemnation 
of conscience, that suffering conscience can not 
be transferred to any one else. It is an entirely 
personal matter. Yet, of course, I can suffer for 
a person because he is a sinner. I can put myself 
under a burden of persuasion that is painful to 
experience; I can suffer from sorrow for him. 
83 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

In many cases I can suffer on his account, but 
not in his stead. With this distinction in mind 
the vicarious suffering of Jesus may be fully ad- 
mitted, while rejecting the substitutional suffer- 
ings attributed on the ground of imputation to 
him of the sinner's sin as impossible and perhaps 
immoral. 

That this vicarious or sympathetic suffering 
may touch the limits of substitutional is shown 
in the following word of Forsyth: "Christ, in 
identifying himself with sinful man, had to take 
the sin's consequences, and especially its judg- 
ment, else the identification would not be com- 
plete and the love would come short. He must 
somehow identify himself in a sympathetic way, 
even with man's self-condemnation, which is the 
reflection of his judgment of God. I need hardly 
allude to the familiar illustrations of the shame 
which innocent people feel through the crime of 
a kinsman. . . . No one can forgive in full who 
does not feel the fullness of the offense. To feel 
the fullness of the offense as the Holiest must, is 
to feel the wrath the Holiest feels." ("Positive 
Preaching," 364.) 

This principle not only brought Jesus to suf- 
fering when his people were in suffering, but it 
also brought his disciples to share his atoning 
suffering. This point was a great difficulty for 
his disciples when Jesus drew near to the cross. 
They could feel that something was impending, 
and their expectations were that the Kingdom 
was about to be established, and that they were 
84 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

to enter into places of power. John and James 
were especially prompt in presenting their re- 
quests for preferment. Jesus, on the other hand, 
saw that the crisis meant suffering and death to 
them, and sought to prepare their minds for it. 
(Matt. 23:38.) 

Fairbairn comments on this point as follows : 
"But at this point as to what was to be accom- 
plished by His death, he and they radically dif- 
fered. They thought that by the cross he was 
to die and they were to live, but he believed that 
they through his death were not to live but die. 
This idea fills his later teaching; it is the moral, 
not simply of the apocalyptic discourses, but of 
the parables already noticed, of his words to the 
women of Jerusalem, and of his lamentation over 
the city. It was the supreme Nemesis of history. ' ' 
(" Philosophy of the Christian Religion," 422.) 

The same principle must bring all the follow- 
ers of Jesus into the place of suffering redeemers 
until the world shall have given up its sin and 
the consequent misery. Instead of the Chris- 
tian's place being one of unalloyed pleasure and 
happiness, it is one where the world's woe presses 
upon him, because he is bound by social ties to 
the world about him. Many resist this principle 
and shrink from the Christian's burdens of suf- 
fering for the world, the sacrifice of money and 
time, and the endurance of weariness and pain; 
but in so far as they do, they do not correctly 
represent the great Redeemer of men. 

The vicarious element in life is dependent 
85 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

upon the fact that often sin's most dreadful curse 
is not visited upon the one who commits it, but 
the wreckage of it is found in the lives and for- 
tunes of others. This becomes possible because 
entire humanity is one organism, from the be- 
ginning of creation to the end of time, in which 
each individual is tied by bonds, more or less dis- 
tinguishable, to every other individual, either in 
giving or receiving impressions. Recent dis- 
coveries of science show that the hereditary 
stream of being may be willfully polluted and poi- 
soned, but can not be cleansed by voluntary action. 
According to Milton, Adam thus laments: 

"Yet well, if here would end 
The misery! I deserved it, and would bear 
My own deservings. But this will not serve : 
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, 
Is propagated curse. . . . 

In me all 
Posterity stands cursed. Fair patrimony 
That I must leave ye, Sons ! 0, were I able 
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none ! ' ' 

Sometimes the sinner is less sensitive to the 
direct effects of his action than is some one else 
related to him. A daughter may be so giddy and 
frivolous that her actions do not hurt her nearly 
so much as they do her mother who is sensitive 
and endowed with high ideals. In that case suf- 
fering is endured chiefly by the one who is re- 
lated. Sorrow for sin, then, is not regret for the 
direct sufferings that come to me, the sinner ; but 
86 



VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

pain for the suffering that I have caused others. 
It would be a poor atonement that made me re- 
pine simply under the direct consequences to my- 
self of my own sin. An adequate atonement must 
make me the vicarious sufferer for the wrong that 
rests on others, for the sin that I have done, as 
well as to bear the pain which I endure because of 
the wrongs that others are doing. 

The above illustration of the mother and 
daughter will enable us to recognize a vicarious 
suffering that is not at all substitutional. The 
daughter does not suffer much just for the reason 
that she is gay and giddy, and the voice of con- 
science is easily drowned, and the sinful deeds 
require time to perfect their fruit. But the 
mother knows the nature of sin; she sees the 
coming harvest of shame and misery which her 
daughter must reap; she suffers intensely in all 
her daughter's sin. She suffers because she is 
tied up closely by sympathy and love to her 
daughter. But she does not suffer for her daugh- 
ter in the sense of instead of her daughter. The 
daughter will suffer just as much as if she had 
no mother to suffer on her account, so far as guilt 
is concerned. And in the day when the daughter 
comes to herself, and sees that her sin has not 
only brought a harvest of evil to herself, but a 
world of anguish to a good and fond mother, will 
not her anguish for sin be all the more, just be- 
cause such unselfish love has been exercised over 
her? 

In that day when the daughter comes home 
87 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

sick and broken by her sin, and the mother waits 
over her in the long days of fever and weakness 
which have overtaken her, that is surely vicarious 
suffering on the part of the mother; is it substi- 
tutional suffering ? It looks like it at first glance. 
But an analysis shows that it is not sin or sin's 
penalty that the mother is suffering, but rather 
love's penalty, the penalty that heals. The 
mother pays the price of restoration, she does not 
bear the burden of condemnation. She illustrates 
the saying that there is no " forgiveness without 
the shedding of blood," in the sense that sin's 
cure is always a great price ; but there is no sug- 
gestion here that blood must be shed before the 
process of restoration can be begun. Life is 
spent in the labor of restoration, and not as a 
price to be paid before a restoring process may 
be inaugurated. In the light of this illustration, 
if it illustrates at all, may we not say that love 
condemned Jesus to the cross — a love that would 
not allow him to turn from the path of the Re- 
deemer of men, because it was so costly — and not 
that the wrath of God toward anybody made the 
cross necessary? The cross was not an expres- 
sion of condemnation ; it was an expression of how 
far God would go in restoring man to divine fel- 
lowship. 

Chaplain Charles C. McCabe became a Chris- 
tian when only a child, and remained faithful to 
that early experience through a long and useful 
life, including the scenes and temptations of a 
soldier's life. When he returned from the war 
88 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

he found his brother one evening in the custody 
of the police. He said to the officer, " Do n 't you 
know, officer, that that is my brother?" I know 
it, Mr. McCabe," said the officer, "but I must 
lock him up for his own safety." The chaplain 
begged the privilege of being locked up with him, 
and it was granted. When the brother awakened 
from his drunken stupor and found himself thus 
accompanied in the prison by his own brother, it 
broke his heart, and Chaplain McCabe was thus 
able to win his brother to Christ. Without this 
vicarious shame and suffering, in human proba- 
bility, he would have failed to win his brother. 
Ordinary persuasion and influence had already 
been exerted and had failed through the long 
years. Thus do brothers always suffer for 
brothers, and by voluntarily sharing their misery 
do they win them back to righteousness, a task 
so great as to be accomplished by a sacrifice no 
less. As Henry James says : ' ' We meet at every 
turn, with Hawthorne, his favorite fancy of com- 
municated sorrows and inevitable atonements. 
Life is an experience in which we expiate the sins 
of others in the intervals of expiating our own. ' ' 
Campbell (Op. cit. 115) holds that the sufferings 
of Christ were not penal, but were rather an 
expression of the divine Mind concerning "a 
manifestation by the Son of what our sins ares 
to the Father's heart. This suffering was neces- 
sary to the perfection of his witness-bearing for 
the Father." 

The breadth and fruitfulness of this principle 
89 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

are beautifully set forth in the following state- 
ment of Phillips Brooks: " Atonement by suffer- 
ing is the result of the Incarnation; Atonement 
being the necessary and Suffering the incidental 
element of that result. But Sacrifice is an essen- 
tial element, for Sacrifice truly signifies here the 
consecration of human nature to its highest use 
and utterance, and does not necessarily involve 
the thought of pain. It is not the destruction but 
the fulfillment of human life. Inasmuch as the 
human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the 
same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his con- 
secration and fulfillment of it makes morally pos- 
sible for us the same consecration and fulfillment 
of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement 
and his Sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, 
become vicarious. It is not that they make un- 
necessary, but that they make possible and suc- 
cessful in us the same processes which were per- 
fect in him. The vicariousness of Jesus is of the 
sort with and has its distant repetitions and il- 
lustrations in the sacrifices by which the men in 
whom God is most revealed open for others the 
way to God and the divine life. " (" Life and Let- 
ters," ii, 477.) Hugh Price Hughes says in one 
of his sermons: "All suffering which is not the 
result of willful personal sin is vicarious, is 
Christ-like, is divine, is part of the remedial proc- 
ess by which the whole universe is being blessed, 
is a helpful ingredient in the restitution of all 
things. ' ' 

"The Son of man also came not to be minis- 
90 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life 
a ransom for many." Fidelity to duty, loyalty 
to social and kindred ties, point the road to the 
sacrificial life that Jesus lived and the painful 
death he died. That law was illustrated and not 
exhausted in his person. Insight into that prin- 
ciple was sufficient, even without the foresight of 
a seer to have made it clear to him at any point 
of his career that the cross was the inevitable 
goal of his career. The following incident by an 
anonymous writer shows that the law is exempli- 
fied in the every-day affairs of life. ' ' Eight years 
ago I became acquainted with a young girl, a 
member of a Catholic family. She had become 
converted and united with our Church. Her par- 
ents, finding threats and ridicule of no avail, 
finally removed to a distant part of the town; but, 
nothing daunted, the young girl walked the long 
distance twice every Sabbath. Though terribly 
deformed in body, she is a girl of bright intellect, 
and had received a long-coveted offer of an ex- 
cellent position with a munificent salary. But to 
accept this would necessitate her leaving home 
altogether. Caring more for the salvation of her 
family than worldly prosperity and honor, she 
decided to remain where she was and follow a 
humble trade, though misjudged and even ill-used. 
With as yet not the least sign of success she is 
patiently plodding on, amid scorn, contempt, and 
ridicule. She is my ideal of a noble woman, be- 
cause she bears her trials in a patient, uncom- 
plaining manner, making no fuss over her sacri- 
91 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

fices, and, indeed, in her humility never thinking 
of them as such, caring more to please her Savior 
than herself." Here is suffering vicarious, but 
not penal nor substitutional. Her suffering is not 
a price paid to the principle of justice ; it is the 
price that love pays, compelled by the social and 
kindred ties that bind life to life and heart to 
heart. 

"I was hungry, and ye did not give me to 
eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I 
was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, 
and ye clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye 
visited me not. Then shall they also answer, say- 
ing, when saw we thee hungry or a thirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did 
not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer 
them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch 
as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, 
ye did it not unto me." (Matt. 25: 42-45.) 

Fairbairn in commenting on these words says : 
' ' In the most authentic and sublime of the apoca- 
lyptic discourses he affirms what we may call the 
vicarious principle. The good or the ill of his 
people is his ; they are one with him and he with 
them. The smallest beneficence to the least of 
his brethren is done to him ; the good refused to 
them is denied to him. And we may add, this 
idea implies its converse: if their sufferings are 
his, his are theirs ; what he endures and what he 
achieves, man achieves and man endures." 
(Op. cit. 417.) 

92 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

This principle is imbedded in the very form 
of our creation. Man is constituted in the begin- 
ning a member of his brother. What one suffers, 
all suffer; what one achieves, all achieve. This 
principle has been nullified, however, by sin in 
the form of selfishness, in which one attempts to 
withdraw from his brothers, to neglect and not 
feel their woes, or even attempting to advance his 
own good by their want and misery. The prin- 
ciple, then, must be re-established by love, sym- 
pathy, and mutual interest. These moral forces 
must repair the rents in human nature as orig- 
inally constituted, made by man's unnaturalness 
and unbrotherliness. The principle was ex- 
pressed even in the old dispensation, when it was 
said, "In all their (children of Israel) affliction, 
he (Jehovah) was afflicted."* 

"Now, when these things were done, the 
princes drew near unto me, saying, The people 
of Israel, and the priests and the Levites, have 
not separated themselves from the people of the 
lands, doing according to their abominations. . . . 
For they have taken of their daughters for them- 
selves and for their sons, so that the holy seed 
have mingled themselves with the peoples of the 
lands : yea, the hand of the princes and the rulers 
hath been chief in this trespass. And when I 
heard this thing, I rent my garment and my robe, 



*For a very forceful statement of the principle, see Ascham: 
"Help from the Hills," 243-248.) 

93 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

and plucked off the hair of my head and my 
beard, and sat down dumbfounded." (Ezra 
9:1-3.) 

Any one who gives himself to Jesus Christ 
and becomes Christlike in heart, immediately will 
have a desire for the salvation of other men. In 
the degree in which one appropriates the charac- 
ter of Jesus does this desire grow in intensity 
until it may become consuming and tend to a 
broken heart, as has been often shown in the case 
of great Christians. One day Henry Drummond 
leaned up against a post in the city of Edinburgh 
sobbing bitterly. People passed him without rec- 
ognizing him or knowing the cause of his sorrow. 
At last one of his friends saw him and went to 
him and said, "Drummond, what is the matter?" 
He replied, "My heart will break unless I can get 
some of these men to come to Christ." He was 
never well after. He went down in greater and 
greater weakness until the end came, dying of 
a broken heart for the sins of men. 

The same incident occurred in the life of Hugh 
Price Hughes. His assistant, Mr. Walters, went 
to his room one morning and found him all alone. 
In response to his knock came a feeble invitation 
to come in. He found him sobbing. On inquiry 
as to what was the matter, he replied, ' ' Oh, Wal- 
ters, I shall die unless we have greater success 
in our mission, unless we succeed in getting more 
men to turn to Christ." He also went to his 
death through increasing weakness, and the end 
soon came. He died for men; of grief for men. 
94 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

This is the principle that brings men of Christ- 
like spirit to death, taking npon themselves the 
world's woe and wretchedness, until it is crush- 
ing and they die of a broken heart. This prin- 
ciple was illustrated by the Savior in the Garden 
of Gethsemane. In his case it was as much 
greater a burden as he was greater than any one 
of his followers ; but that there is a fundamental 
difference in the nature of the principle involved, 
it is difficult to see. That we may hesitate in 
making the comparison with others may well be 
due to the fact that we are unable fully to de- 
scribe the breadth and depth of the Savior's 
vision of the sin that men endure, the strength of 
the sympathetic bond which placed him under 
men's woe, the anguish of his disappointment 
that men would not accept the love of God which 
he came to reveal. If we could only see these in 
their rightful proportions, the difference between 
his burden and that of others would at once make 
him the prince of Saviors and at the same time 
would show how it is possible for his followers to 
drink the cup of which he drank, as he promised 
his disciples that they should. Says Dr. W. W. 
McLane: "The love of the holy for the unholy 
has in it always the element of pain; the love of 
the pure for the impure has in it the element of 
shame ; the love of the righteous for the unright- 
eous has in it the element of compassionate and 
vicarious suffering. The love of God himself 
knows no exception to this law." (Homiletic Re- 
view.) 

95 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

If it were not the darkness of condemnation 
that nailed Jesus to the cross, how may we ex- 
plain the consciousness of Jesus when he cried 
out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me?" 

In venturing an answer to a confessedly great 
difficulty, one always imperils his cause to the 
possible weakness of his incidental explanation. 
It might be better strategy, if establishment of 
a contention were the only object in view, not to 
venture any explanation, and leave others to dis- 
cover as best they may the depth of this crucial 
and unparalleled statement. With the purpose 
of contributing a ray of light we give the follow- 
ing suggestion: 

All the experiences of a person dying were 
as necessary for Jesus as that he should die at 
all. Of all theories of the life of Jesus the docetic 
theory is the most immoral. For God to pretend 
to be giving his Son to the life of mankind, while 
in fact he was all the time far removed from the 
limitations which are normal and necessary to 
it, is, when clearly stated, rejected by every mind 
jealous of the moral character of God. And now 
the necessities of his pleading embassage to man 
has brought Jesus to the experience of cruci- 
fixion : shall it be real, or by the interposition of 
divine power, raising him above human experi- 
ence, shall it be only an appearance of suffering? 
The integrity of God is at stake in the answer 
to that question. If it once should become a cur- 
rent belief that Jesus did not pass through such 
96 



VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

anguish as a real man would pass through in 
such an experience, the spectacle would be put 
down as a fraud, that would turn the sympathies 
of the world away from the cross instead of in 
its direction. This, then, is the point of view of 
our answer. In the process of physical death 
Jesus must pass through the " valley of shadows" 
spiritually as really as any one else. The anguish 
betrayed by his cry betokens the reality of the 
experience rather than an exemplary expression 
of the wrath of God. 

David Smith ("The Days of His Flesh," 501) 
rejects the idea that this cry of Jesus was due 
to human weakness. He also rejects the idea that 
God was really angry with him. "On the con- 
trary, he was never so dear to God, never so 
manifestly the Beloved Son in whom the Father 
was well pleased." . . . "Nevertheless his des- 
olation was a visitation of God, and he suffered 
as the bearer of sin. ... It was needful for 
Jesus, in order that he might redeem us, to 
identify himself with us in our misery and make 
it all his own. ' ' Whether this author contradicts 
himself in these statements will depend upon the 
sense in which he uses the words, "suffered as 
the bearer of sin." The vital question in a 
scheme of substitution is, Did God the Father feel 
toward Jesus in that hour as he would toward a 
real and incorrigible sinner? This idea we re- 
ject, and say that the Father, while allowing Jesus 
to pass through such an experience as a human 
being would pass through who was thus dying, 
97 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

felt love toward him as always. If this answer 
be allowed, then Jesus in no sense took the sin- 
ner's place in punishment to appease the wrath 
of God. He took the needful place of the Elder 
Son, the Only Begotten, in striving to persuade 
his brethren to be reconciled to the Father. In 
this sense he suffered to persuade us not to suf- 
fer; in other words, that we might not suffer.* 

Many will turn to the fifty-third chapter of 
Isaiah for confirmation of the opinion that we 
have here a picture of the Christ substituted in 



*The cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?" is taken by some to mean that Christ is bearing 
the sin of the -world and hence God averts his face as if he 
were, indeed, a sinner. From this view of substitution our mind 
invincibly revolts. Stevens says: "The exclamation . . . 
must not be didactically pressed into an assertion that in his 
death God withdrew from Christ his favor and fellowship. The 
Psalm from which it is quoted (22: 1) suggests rather the idea 
of abandonment to suffering- than that of abandonment to deser- 
tion bv God." ("N. T. Theol.," 134; Cp. "Christian Doctrine of 
Salvation," 51.) Garvie, although seeming- to accept the general 
position yet draws back in the following fashion: "To affirm the 
subjective sense of desertion by God in Christ is not the same as to 
assert the objective fact of that desertion. The Father did not 
abandon his Son, although the Son felt himself so abandoned." 
This is nothing more than to affirm that Jesus suffered the natural 
depression which every one must when undergoing unjustly a death 
from which it is not the will of God to deliver him. This has in 
it nothing of substitution in the offensive sense. 

Garvie even quotes Calvin as follows: "We do not indeed 
insinuate that God was ever either opposed to or angry with 
him. For how could he be angry with his beloved Son, on whom 
his mind rested? or how could Christ by his intercession pro- 
pitiate for others a Father whom he had as an enemy to him- 
self? This we say, that he sustained the gravity of divine severity; 
since, being stricken by the hand of God. he experienced all the 
signs of an angry and punishing God." ("Inner Life of 
Jesus," 418.) 

98 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

punishment for the sinner. The literature on this 
chapter is very extensive, and a detailed examina- 
tion of its phrases would carry us beyond limits 
either suitable to our general purpose or neces- 
sary. We must summarize the line that our ex- 
amination would take: 

1. The burden of proof rests heavily upon 
those who assume that this chapter is a direct and 
exclusive picture of Jesus Christ. Many of the 
phrases are exceedingly apt; but some are in- 
applicable to him. The fitness of its phrases is 
by no means a sufficient and conclusive indication 
that Jesus is here photographed in the mind of 
the prophet. There are many passages in history 
descriptive of one period or person which have 
very striking aptness in application to some other 
person or period. 

2. We are not convinced that the subject in 
Isaiah's mind was the historical person Jesus. 
He was describing some person or people, doubt- 
less only ideally, who was in direct, immediate 
historical connection with the people to whom he 
was preaching and whom he sought to influence 
by his picture. For this purpose a character five 
hundred years removed would be quite ineffectual. 

3. Nevertheless we are quite ready to accept 
this chapter as Messianic prophecy in the sense 
that it is an idealized picture of a Vicarious Suf- 
ferer, who, as directly seen, may have been the 
"Suffering Servant" of God in Isaiah's own 
time, but is a picture true to the vicarious suf- 
ferer of any time, which picture was realized in 

99 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

Jesus Christ in an ideal and complete sense, such 
as was never realized in any other person or 
people. 

4. As a picture of a Substitutional Sufferer 
it could apply to one subject only. As a picture 
of a Vicarious Sufferer it becomes universal in 
its application : for vicarious suffering, as a prin- 
ciple of life, is as broad and universal as human 
society. On the other hand, substitutional suffer- 
ing for sins must refer to one case only and is 
not of universal application. 

Confirmatory of our view, we find that "in pre- 
Christian Judaism, Isaiah fifty-third had never 
been interpreted in a Messianic sense." (Mac- 
intosh, ' < The Person of Jesus Christ, " 19. ) How- 
ever, in the opinion of this author quoted, "in 
that sublime picture of vicarious pain there lay 
truths which found a perfect echo and fulfillment 
in Jesus' soul." If Isaiah has in mind a sub- 
stituted sufferer, then this passage must refer to 
Jesus, and to no one else, and all the exegetical 
difficulties of so narrowing its reference are bar- 
riers against substitutional atonement. These 
exegetical barriers are so great as generally to 
be regarded as insuperable. On the other hand, 
there are no exegetical difficulties, and can be 
none, to its application to Jesus as a Vicarious 
Sufferer. This consideration lends its powerful 
support to the atonement which we are seeking 
to illuminate, and against the Satisfactionist's 
view. 

In what sense can we interpret the text, "He 
100 



VICAKIOUS PEINCIPLE. 

bore our sins on the tree?" In rejecting the sub- 
stitutional interpretation as immoral we do not 
incur thereby the burden of explaining all mys- 
teries. Our explanation may or may not be re- 
jected without any danger of establishing sub- 
stitution as a satisfactory theory. 

There is more than one sense in which Jesus 
bore our sins, not only in his death, but in the 
totality of his incarnation, including his life and 
his death. Any sinless being who enters into the 
organism of humanity, with its violations of law 
and the consequent suffering therefrom, bears 
the sin of all constituents of that organism. He 
is tied to all others by living, unbreakable bonds, 
which make their experiences his experiences. 
He can escape their pains and penalties only in 
the degree in which he can isolate his life from 
all others. If he could absolutely isolate himself 
from society and live entirely alone, he could es- 
cape. But that no one born of a woman can do. 
He is introduced into society by the fact of birth, 
and remains tied up to all people by the strength 
of his sympathy. If his nature is hard and un- 
feeling, then, to a degree, he may escape their pen- 
alties ; but in the degree of his love and response 
to others' needs he feels their anguish and bears 
all their sin and privation. 

The above is the condemnation to suffering 
of every man with an ordinary mission in life. 
But when we suppose that this mission is extraor- 
dinary; that it is an aggressive mission, an at- 
tack upon sin, an effort to arrest the wave of 
101 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

suffering that is threatening all men, then to 
the degree that he rushes toward it to stop it, 
to the degree that he does not retire before it, 
to that degree he must suffer under it. It is this 
aspect of the life of Jesus that throws a flood 
of light upon his suffering in our behalf, while 
no finite picture of that attempt may exhaust 
the sweep of it. Jesus rushes in between the two 
fighters in an attempt to stop their mutual de- 
struction, and they both turn against him. Phari- 
sees and Sadducees were at great enmity against 
each other, but they both turn against him as 
he strives to bring to both of them the principle 
of mutual peace. Pontius Pilate and Herod were 
personal enemies to each other, but in his pres- 
ence they unite to destroy him. He bears the sin 
of all by opposing the sin of all, and all the sin- 
ners recognize in him the opponent of their sins 
and unite against him. 

This was true in so far as sin was conscious 
and freely chosen; and how great is the bulk of 
that suffering when we think of sin as a heritage 
of ages! Its bulk has been growing through 
the millennea: disease, superstition, weakness, 
custom, prejudice, laws, and government — all 
wrought out and perpetuated from age to age in 
the darkness of sin — oppose and would crush this 
great challenger of them; and he must feel the 
weight of their opposition and vengeance. 

But he is not a mere opponent of the past and 
its inheritances. He comes with the watchword 
of a forward movement. He would have men to 
102 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

be reconciled to the Father. They think they 
know something of the Father. His disturbance 
of their notions creates an opposition that grows 
very bitter. And so the sins of passion, of preju- 
dice, of misunderstanding, of false faith Jesus 
had always to bear. The moment that gathers 
into itself all the lines of suffering and opposi- 
tions is the experience on the cross — the culmina- 
tion of all, but not dissociated from any of the 
causes that made his life one of suffering. 

But is this suffering now past? Was it com- 
plete that Friday morning when hate reached its 
limit and could do no more, having wrought the 
death of the object of its hate? 

A much more worthy picture of the Cross is 
that which sees in it only an illustration of God's 
relation to sin. If Jesus had withdrawn from the 
world at that point, retiring into the safe ex- 
clusiveness of his pre-incarnate home, having 
done all that love could do, and having been re- 
jected as love's token, washing his hands of the 
consequences of that rejection, and leaving the 
world henceforth to bear its crowning sin of cru- 
cifying the Lord of Love, then, indeed, would 
suffering have ceased. But the world was still 
in its actual sin ; God was still bound to the world 
by the bonds of love, just the same as before, 
when he sent his Son into the world to die for it. 
It is hard to see how the manifestation of love 
could effect any change in love's feeling toward 
the world, unless that manifestation had actually 
conquered the world, which we well know it has 
103 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

not yet done, except in a few individual cases. 
The record of love is made, and can always be 
pointed to as the everlasting evidence of God's 
attitude toward sinful men; but sinful men there 
still are, and their sin hurts the heart of God 
still, the same as it always did. Sin's penalty 
imposed on love is always suffering, and no for- 
mal deed can release it, as if by a legal formula. 
Having died for the world, Christ can not turn 
with indifference from it. As long as he cares 
for it he bears it on his heart and suffers for it. 
My sin, your sin, is crucifying the Lord afresh 
to-day just as the Jews ' sin crucified him on that 
Good Friday morning. He is always bearing our 
sin, as long as his patience lasts, until the hour 
when with omniscient insight he despairingly 
says : It is enough ; let him alone ; he is eternally 
joined to his idols. 

"Without the shedding of blood there is no re- 
mission of sins. " As a statement of judicial sen- 
tence requiring a bloody sacrifice, this sounds 
rather blood-thirsty. It can hardly be defended 
as a statement of history regarding God-imposed 
penalty. The Old Testament records instances 
where God forgave sins on the ground of simple 
repentance; the Book of Jonah seems to have 
been written for the express purpose of teaching 
this. Moreover, the prophets on different occa- 
sions rejected the bloody sacrifices which were 
brought to propitiate Jehovah, repentance being 
absent. As a statement, then, of religious prac- 
tice it does not seem so very important. On the 
104 



VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 

other hand, as a statement of social fact it is 
impregnable. Where was there ever wrong done 
that did not require somebody's sacrifice to re- 
pair? This repair is usually not within the power 
of the sinner who did the wrong, and so it comes 
to rest on the life and labor and sacrifice of some 
innocent party. Society always pays the penalty 
for the wrong done by any one of its members. 
When it comes to the great sin of the world, that 
social penalty must be paid by the great Father 
himself, as the only One great enough to accom- 
plish the repair. "Ina world where God can not 
cease to be pure and man can not will himself out 
of existence, to make the guilty man fit to be rec- 
onciled with the pure and eternal God is a work 
which may well cause suffering to the holiest and 
most blessed being." (Fairbairn, " Philosophy 
of the Christian Religion," 483-4.) 



105 



Chaptek rv. 

THE CROSS A REVELATION. 

Jesus Christ came into the world to reveal God. 
That purpose was more completely accomplished 
on the cross than anywhere else, or in any other 
experience, because it afforded the supreme test 
of divine love. The Cross was in the first place 
a revelation of the heart of love in God. The 
depth of Love's revelation is commensurate with 
the sacrifice that is undergone. Even though the 
life of Christ was actuated by the same love as 
his death, yet to men the manifestation is more 
unmistakable in the latter. Man can understand 
the language of sacrifice when he can not that of 
teaching or other form of service. When man be- 
holds Jesus on the cross and apprehends that 
he is the messenger of the Father, then he knows, 
as in no other manner, that the heart of the 
Father is yearning for his fellowship as he never 
knew it before. 

In the second place the Cross is a revelation 
of the sinfulness in man. Jesus was so innocent 
of offense, so serviceful to men, so worthy of the 
regard of men, and deserving of nothing opposed 
to love and regard, that when men took him and 
crucified him it was such an exhibition of cruelty, 
of malice and wickedness, that perhaps no event 
106 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

of history shows more clearly the sheer evil of 
which the human heart is capable. " There is a 
strange and thrilling power in the cross of Jesus 
to lift men out of sin which our theologies have 
not always sounded to its depths. The cross in 
itself is not a redemptive force : it is the symbol 
of a redemptive life. The ministry of Jesus cul- 
minating in the tragic crisis of Calvary was not 
a sacrifice to God for human sin, but a vision of 
God brought to men to awaken them to the enor- 
mity of sin. The death of Jesus was the crown- 
ing hour of such a sublime revelation of the 
nature of God that after nineteen centuries of 
studied attention the world scarce yet is aware 
of its ineffable splendor. Jesus redeems because 
he teaches ; he saves because he reveals ; he atones 
because he touches the mystery of the world with 
illuminating glory." (Ascham, "Help from the 
Hills," 196-7.) 

If one would know the terrible nature of sin, 
he must study it not in its effect upon a lowly 
or a degraded creature. The breaking of a law 
by a poor animal would indeed bring upon it 
some degree of misery, but it would not greatly 
attract the attention of the world. The fall from 
a degraded position to one still lower is enough 
to call attention to the law of consequences; but 
it would not startle the world with its tragedy. 
But if one would know sin in its power, let him 
see it in its operation upon an exalted being. See 
a well-born man of high lineage, with splendid 
powers handed to him by heredity; see him fall 
107 



THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

into depths revolting to contemplate, and if we 
have any just notion of what a human destiny 
is we are startled and alarmed at the awful spec- 
tacle. But a higher example still is before us in 
the relation of Jesus Christ to sin. He was sin- 
less, innocent, and yet sin brought him to shame, 
persecution, poverty, death. Sin that could strike 
at the absolutely deserving, and bring him to the 
bitterest pain and shame, is a principle so utterly 
abhorrent as to fail of all description. But the 
revelation of its utter horror is dependent upon 
the presence of the Son of God writhing under 
its cruel power, and unable because of love to 
escape its ruthless and pitiless grasp. So the 
cross of Jesus reveals to us the awfulness of sin, 
and the revelation has its essential part to play 
in our salvation from its power and perdition. 
The Cross is that revelation of God which 
represents the climax of cost to God. All revela- 
tion of God represents a cost to the Divine mode 
of life. Any relation between the Divine Infinite 
and the human finite makes necessary some modi- 
fication, some restraint, in the Divine activity, 
which it is not misleading to characterize as a 
divine cost. The father, six feet tall, who under- 
takes to keep step with the little child, three feet 
tall, on the morning walk will need so to restrain 
himself in the usual and normal movements of 
his body as to represent cost to himself, possible 
only because of love. Any revelation of God, ex- 
cept the ambassadorial representation of some 
messenger, so unlike him in the sweep of his life 
108 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

as to suggest little confidence that the messenger 
can adequately understand him that he would re- 
veal, must mean a cost to God. The metaphysical 
mysteries of the. incarnation we will not attempt 
to portray; but the Trinitarian life must have 
been disturbed, yea, painfully disturbed, by the 
mission of the Son to mankind. The cost of that 
mission was infinitely increased by the necessity 
of the deific Messenger presenting himself in such 
form that he might get a response from human 
sympathies, and within such limitations as to 
awaken human hope and effort. 

Thus all revelation from a God whose mode 
of life flows on in the infinitely deific forms held 
by Christian faith to mortal and human beings 
as yet but little grown in divine stature, but little 
trained to divine thinking, must be accomplished 
by much Divine restraint and limitation. 

But this divine cost in revelation is immeas- 
urably increased when the revelation must not 
only be made to immature beings, but to sinful 
beings. Revelation under this condition can not 
be merely of glory and power, even in measures 
that will not oppress and destroy the perceptive 
powers of men; but it must be of love, and of 
love through sacrifice. Love's expression toward 
sinners can only be in the forms of suffering; 
and love's uttermost expression to sinners must 
be in the form of uttermost suffering. Thus the 
Cross is the uttermost stage of pain and suffer- 
ing to which revelation of God to man, sinful 
man, could attain. 

109 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

The Cross, when properly viewed, is a revela- 
tion of the unity of God. But it must be added 
that the satisfaction view of the Cross is a mani- 
festation of Tritheism. That portrayal of recon- 
ciliation of God the Father through Jesus Christ 
his Son, by which the death of Jesus becomes the 
ground on which God can forgive the sins of men, 
is a separation of the persons of the Trinity so 
essential as to involve a difference of will, if not 
of love. If Jesus is the second Person of the 
Trinity, whatever would stand in the way of jus- 
tice for the Father or a lowering of the standard 
of righteousness or holiness with the Father 
would be equally so with him. Anything involv- 
ing a moral consideration must have been as 
forceful with the Son as with the Father. For 
Jesus to undertake the relief of man from his 
sin or punishment — an undertaking that must 
have been in advance of the sacrifice of himself 
or the ground of propitiation — when the claims 
of holiness and justice and moral government 
were so stern as to make it impossible for the 
Father to forgive man, or even to love him, is 
for him to make these claims of holiness and jus- 
tice weigh less with himself than with the Father. 
That is to say that there was a different moral 
standard with the Son than with the Father, as 
well as a different will, which is a difference of 
character great enough to be comparable with the 
different dispositions and determinations pic- 
tured to us among heathen gods. It is such a dif- 
ferentiation between the Father and the Son as 
110 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

to produce a Tritheism instead of a Trinity. We 
think it fundamental that there could be no dif- 
ference in the love, the sense of justice and holi- 
ness, and the volitions in the Father and the Son. 
But such a Transaction as the death of Christ 
on the cross is often pictured to be, is a fatal 
disruption of the moral unity of the Godhead. 
Let us rather hear Jesus say on the cross, as 
he did say in its shadow, "He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." 

In many authors the sorrow of Christ is 
spoken of as a display — that it was necessary 
for Christ to go through a certain amount of 
suffering, as if his problem were a mere perform- 
ance for the eye of the world, that the world might 
know the majesty of law and thus uphold the 
sanctions of government. Sometimes it is spoken 
of as for the eye of the Father. It may readily 
be conceded that the exhibition of divine interest 
and love is an indispensable element of atone- 
ment; but this is by no means discounted, if we 
hold that it is incidental to its main purpose. For 
example, Campbell says: "But to the vindication 
of the name of God and to the condemnation of 
the sin of man that actual meeting of the eternal 
love with the enmity of the carnal mind, which 
took place when Christ came to men in the Fa- 
ther's name — in the fellowship of the Father's 
love, was necessary; and therefore, however much 
it added to Christ's sufferings as bearing our sins, 
it was permitted ; and the Father ordered the path 
111 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

in which he led the Son so as to give full and 
perfect development and manifestation to the 
self-sacrificing life of love that was in Christ, 
fullness and perfection to his declaration of the 
Father's name." 

To our mind, Christ had a mission in the earth 
— the winning back of men to fellowship with God. 
In accomplishing this mission he met with opposi- 
tion, suffering, and death. He could not persuade 
men by word that the Father loved them and 
would forgive. He would have failed to persuade 
them at all, if it were not for the fact that death 
is a stronger exhibition of love than anything in 
life can be. The love-revealing power of his 
death is the evangel that is to be preached to 
win men to repentance. 

We borrow the words of Dr. W. W. McLane 
in his statement of the cross as a revelation of 
love and of God: "Love, then, the love of God 
for sinful men is the center and soul of this scene 
of suffering and death. The eternal life which 
is invisible became visible in the form of Jesus; 
the divine Father whom no man had seen was 
declared in the Son ; the spiritual love whose suf- 
ferings were unseen was made manifest in the 
physical sufferings which all men could see, and 
the greatness of that love was shown by death 
beyond which no visible proof could be given. 
The love of God in its patience, its long-suffering, 
its redeeming, renewing, and saving quality is 
commended unto us. Hitherto men had thought 
of God as angry with the sinner, now they see 
112 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

that he is also grieved by sin. Hitherto man had 
thought of God as full of wrath toward the sin- 
ner, now they see that he is full of compassion. 
Hitherto men had thought of God as swift to 
punish, now they see that he himself suffers to 
save. Now is revealed the supreme fact that love 
which rules in the heart and soul of man making 
the holy, who loves, suffer for the unholy, whom 
he loves, has its source and sway in the heart 
and love of God." 

It is God who makes atonement; it was he 
who sought reconciliation. The great means 
which he could use for this purpose was in re- 
vealing to man that in spite of his sin God loved 
him. So we may regard the Cross as the great 
means of atonement; because it was the supreme 
revelation of God's love. 

As an exhibition of God's love the Cross is 
the most powerful force that the world has ever 
felt. That God should submit to such a cruelty 
in his efforts to win man is a sign of his measure- 
less yearning over him. But the force of the 
Cross was exerted toward man, and not toward 
God. It is Christ pleading with men to receive 
forgiveness, and not Christ pleading with the 
Father to be willing to forgive. We hold this 
without forgetting that Jesus said on the cross, 
"Father, forgive them: for they know not what 
they do. ' ' That saying was a mere incident, hav- 
ing specific and limited reference to the soldiers 
engaged in the act of crucifying him, and had no 
general reference to the whole subject of his cru- 
113 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

cifixion in relation to the world. The Cross is 
God's last fathomless appeal to man to give up 
his rebellion. If its appeal is effective, man will 
turn and ask forgiveness. Then the Father may 
be reconciled, indeed, and on condition of man 
accepting a new nature which will be in harmony 
with himself, he may remove the barriers to fel- 
lowship and forgive the guilt of sin. This will 
safeguard the holiness of his own nature and the 
moral government of the world; for at a stroke 
it removes the sin and sinner from their rebellious 
and destructive activities. 

That anything more is done, or needs to be 
done, it is impossible for us to see. This meets 
all the needs of the problem ; unless one accredits 
to God the Father a vindictive enmity toward 
men that is the exact opposite of the feeling that 
Christ has for them. This latter involves the 
whole question in insoluble difficulty, and is re- 
quired by no condition of the problem. It is not 
required that one should die in order that God 
may forgive a repentant sinner. He may forgive 
in absolute holiness, provided it can be so done 
that sin will cease. It is only required that one 
should die in order that man might repent and 
give up his sin; this, with God's love always ac- 
tive, is the sum and substance of the problem. 

Dinsmore denies that the Cross has this power 
of inducing repentance. "It is not infrequently 
affirmed," he says, "that the revelation of the 
character of God which Jesus made is the chief 
power in leading men to repentance. This asser- 
114 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

tion is not borne out by our investigation. Both 
in literature and in life the fell results of wrong- 
doing first awaken the slumbering soul and turn 
its steps toward righteousness. When it faces 
in a new direction, and confronts a fresh light, 
the sense of personal guilt increases, and repent- 
ance is perfected; but penitence is seldom orig- 
inated by the sight of the greatness of love." 
(Op. cit. 204-5.) 

This difference of view is partly a question of 
words. He has stated the facts correctly. Retri- 
bution does bring one to a halt in the career of 
sin. It raises the question of the rationality and 
profit of the course. But repentance from the 
point of view of experienced retribution is a sort 
of calculating course of safety or profit. It is 
not a sorrow for sin, but a sorrow for sin's suf- 
fering. If at the point of arrested sinfulness the 
Cross did not arise, manifesting the willingness 
of God to restore the sinner to fellowship, and 
beget in him a real repentance, then the pain of 
sin would but turn the sufferer to deeper hate 
against the author of the suffering. The Prodigal 
in his depths calculates that it would be better 
to be a servant in his father's house than to con- 
tinue to feed swine. He starts back home with 
the purpose of asking for a job. This is a stage 
of regret, induced by his personal losses; it is 
not yet repentance, or a change of mind concern- 
ing the matter of taking a loyal place again in 
the home. But as he is returning he meditates 
on his father's kindness. A feeling for the out- 
115 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

rage his father has suffered displaces his pur- 
pose to better his own condition, and when they 
meet he forgets to ask for a job as a servant, and 
only confesses his own sin. This is repentance 
induced by love. 

This view of the revealing function of the 
Cross is pushed too far when it is ever held, as it 
often is, that it was necessary for Christ to seem 
to suffer and appear to pass through all the ap- 
pearances of human weakness, but that, of course, 
he could not really suffer because he was God, 
and God can not suffer. Somerville says: "Lu- 
theranism, holding that the natural effect of the 
union of the Son of God with our nature was the 
communication to the latter of the Divine attri- 
butes of the former, saved itself from the charge 
of reducing humanity to a mere semblance by 
maintaining that the exercise of these divine at- 
tributes was in abeyance during the earthly life 
of Jesus, that they existed in him only in a con- 
cealed or hidden form.'' ("St. Paul's Concep- 
tion of Christ, ' ' 205.) This docetic view of Christ 
is ever obtruding itself when men reason super- 
ficially about the infinite attributes of Jesus. We 
must ever be ready to denounce it as charging 
an immorality upon God. President King says : 
"The religious need of the humanity of Christ, 
we should never forget, is very great. Otherwise 
his whole life is unreal and has no true relation 
to our life, and he could give to us no perfect rev- 
elation of the perfect filial relation to God — no 
true revelation of man. But more than this is 
116 



CROSS A REVELATION. 

true. It is supremely in the character of Christ 
that God stands fully revealed, and this character 
must be real — the real character of the man Jesus. 
His true humanity is, therefore, essential to the 
revelation of his divinity as well — to any true 
revelation of God." ("Reconstruction in The- 
ology," 190.) 

In a docetic conception of Christ there is no 
revelation of any character, because that which 
we see is unreal. Even though it pictured God 
truly, yet when we came to possess the idea that 
the appearance was not true to reality we could 
not accept the appearance for its full value, but 
we would discount totally any direct impression 
produced. For the reason that such an incarna- 
tion would destroy the whole value of the revela- 
tion as it appeared, the docetic view of Christ 
and his cross is the most vicious conception of 
the incarnation that can be held. It is not good 
for its face value, and any value that it may be 
supposed to have must be arbitrarily placed upon 
it ; that by one person, and this by another. 

A docetic faith may seem to many a devout 
worshiper an exaltation of Jesus by the testimony 
of faith over the senses. For example, Luther 
said, "I have a better provider than all angels 
are ; he lies in the cradle, and hangs on the breast 
of a virgin, but sits, nevertheless, at the right 
hand of God, the Almighty Father." (Harnack, 
"Hist, of Dogma," Eng. Tr. vii, 173-4.) Cyril 
held that the perfecting of Jesus was docetic, be- 
cause moral incompleteness is incompatible with 
117 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

sinlessness. We may recognize the worshipful 
impulse of those who testify thus to that which is 
a contradiction to the testimony of sense and rea- 
son. Nevertheless they are undermining all pos- 
sible faith. How can we expect people to con- 
tinue to believe that which the thought can not 
construe ? 

When this docetic mental instrument for mak- 
ing things different for faith from what they are 
for sight and reason comes to deal with the Cross, 
we then have as a conclusion a make-believe suf- 
fering for the purpose of impressing a world as 
yet uninitiated in the divine mysteries. When 
we are more advanced we will be able to see that 
Jesus was above all this at all times, and never 
really hungered or was weary or ignorant of any- 
thing or was subject to any necessity, and the 
Cross was only Divine theatricals. This step in 
belief was actually taken by Marcion, 150 A. D., 
who held that the suffering of Christ was only 
apparent, because the Logos had assumed only 
a spectral human body. Such a construction 
of God's dealing with us will leave us at last not 
only without faith in God, but without love or 
respect for him, who would thus attempt to de- 
ceive us. 



118 



Chapter V. 

THE FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

Accepting the ground that there is alienation be- 
tween God and man, how can there be a recon- 
ciliation? Who shall take the first step? 

It is admitted that man can not. It is hard 
to see what material step he could take that would 
in any degree be a ground of propitiation. It is 
allowed on all hands that God must take the first 
step. On the ground of God's constant love — lov- 
ing us while we were yet sinners — it is perfectly 
easy to see that God would and could take the 
first step. But if God's attitude is such as is 
pictured by those who hold to a satisfaction 
atonement, it is hard to see how he can or will 
take that step until he is propitiated. And as man 
is unable to propitiate him, even if he could will 
to do so, there seems to be an impasse on both 
sides. Neither one can take the first step. 

On the other hand, accepting the position of 
God's constant love, while he is grieved and of- 
fended, yet pitying and yearning for the restora- 
tion of fellowship, it seems quite natural that he 
should take any step that was righteous and hope- 
ful in reconciling man. Fellowship can not be 
perfected until man has changed his mind and 
attitude ; but there is no impediment in the mind 
119 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of God against forgiving him, when his mind is 
changed. In other words, the only problem is, 
How to remove the rebellious mind of man. That 
removed, and the two move directly and unim- 
pededly toward renewed fellowship. On the as- 
sumption of man's changed mind, contrition, 
yielding himself in holiness to God, it is incredible 
that God demands a sacrifice as a propitiation to 
his anger and alienation. 

The plea is made, however, that alienation be- 
tween God and man was reciprocal; when man 
sinned against God he became alienated by losing 
confidence that God would now meet him in favor 
or peace. And on the other hand, God, as of- 
fended against, would be alienated from man and 
could not again meet him with approval. The 
conclusion is drawn from this that some restitu- 
tion or sacrifice or satisfaction must be made by 
man in order that their fellowship relations may 
be restored, and that until such satisfaction is 
made God is unwilling to enter into fellowship 
with him. 

The reciprocal alienation is admitted as a fact; 
but the inference drawn from it may not follow. 
The best analogy is a father. He disapproves his 
son's actions. He is out of harmony with him 
on account of his sins. But this feeling of aliena- 
tion never goes so far that he would refuse to 
forgive a penitent son and enter again into fel- 
lowship with him, unless he has ceased to be a 
father and has become a monster. An earthly 
father might, indeed, ask or require some sign 
120 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

that the repentance was actual; but, assured of 
that, he would hardly refuse forgiveness, and con- 
tinue to demand some satisfaction to be made to 
his feelings. 

So our Heavenly Father is grieved. He is 
alienated from his child ; but it is hard to believe 
that he is implacable, and must have some satis- 
faction rendered to his feelings before he will for- 
give and renew the relationship with his child. 
The two things: repentance and acceptance from 
his hand of a new nature that will keep his law, 
seems to meet the requirements for restoration 
of fellowship. To say that the Father must be 
satisfied, and that the Son must render the satis- 
faction, is to make a distinction in the feelings 
of the persons of the Godhead that is incredible. 
If the doctrine of satisfaction demanded some- 
thing explicitly from the hands of man, it might 
not exalt the nature of God, but it would at least 
be logical in its demands. 

It has been assumed that the sense of justice 
as held by God requires that a certain amount of 
suffering must follow sin before the foundation 
for forgiveness of sin is laid. "The soul that 
sinneth, it shall die," is a fundamental law of 
God. God has made the world so that sin and suf- 
fering are indissolubly connected. Now it is as- 
sumed that before God will forgive sin, there 
must be death and suffering. President Edwards 
says, ' ' God could not be just to himself with this 
vindication (an infinite punishment) unless there 
could be such a thing as a repentance, humilia- 
121 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

tion, and sorrow for this sin proportionable to 
the greatness of the majesty despised. " For that 
there must needs be ''either an equivalent pun- 
ishment or an equivalent sorrow and repent- 
ance." ("Satisfaction for Sin," ch. ii, 1-3.) 

We will not detain ourselves with the notion 
of an infinite sin, because committed against an 
infinite Being. We are of opinion that man can 
commit only a human sin. Likewise we reject 
the notion of an infinite punishment as entirely 
outside the range of our problem. It only re- 
mains to note in this connection that if repent- 
ance can atone for sin, as President Edwards im- 
plies, it only needs to be genuine and true and 
human. It must not be mere seeking safety after 
wrath is excited against us. It should be sincere 
turning away from sin and acceptance of the new 
life implied in ceasing from sin. If repentance 
ever is adequate, then the only repentance of 
which man is capable is adequate. Concerning 
the word "infinite" we need only say: If sin is 
infinite because committed against an infinite 
Person, then repentance is infinite when it goes 
out toward an infinite Person. That due repent- 
ance for sin would expiate guilt is the testimony 
of the human heart in that its first attempt at 
peace with God is an attempt to repent. Note 
the example of the Ninevites when Jonah 
preached the wrath of God and the impending 
destruction. 

But we return to the question, Is the purpose 
of God's law of retribution maintained by the 
122 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

death of Christ as a substitute for the death of 
the sinner? What is the purpose of that law? 
Is the law ever abrogated? 

The substitution of Christ in the place of the 
sinner is not a maintenance of the law — is not 
its fulfillment, because he is not the one that sins. 
Whatever substitution does in the way of moral 
appeal, it does not carry out the law. It remains 
a question still whether atonement has displaced 
the law. Sinners still suffer for their sins, even 
when they feel that God has forgiven them. This 
law is a statement of the nature of our life. It 
is not like a statute that has to be vindicated 
by an imposed punishment after sin has been 
committed. It is a principle that executes itself 
in the very life of the person that sins. The death 
which it threatens is not in the nature of an 
award, but rather of a result, an automatic conse- 
quence. The atonement does not set it aside. 
The Christian who eats poison dies just the same 
as others; his justified condition in God's sight 
has nothing to do with the working of the law. 
We must look elsewhere, then, for the purpose 
and nature of the atonement. The law spoken 
of has its place and working in the material 
world; we must look for a basis in the spiritual 
world. 

The law of retribution in the spiritual world 
is of the nature of awards. It is conditioned on 
knowledge and will. The award of demerit with 
whatever consequences should follow is not made 
to one who in ignorance performed a certain out- 
123 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ward deed. The physical deed in itself counts 
nothing (as to moral deserts and awards). The 
deed of demerit must be a spiritual act. The 
morally evil nature of the deed must be known 
in advance, and in the light of that knowledge the 
will must then have consciously chosen it. Then 
it is an act of the spirit; whether it is ever car- 
ried out in the physical world is immaterial in 
estimating its moral character. 

Such a deed breaks fellowship with him who 
made the arrangement and instituted the law. 
According to the necessities of the case he will 
now make the awards concerning it. 

What are the demands or necessities of the 
case? 

Looked at from the needs of the universe, 
physical punishment should come to him who 
violates physical law ; that is provided in the un- 
abrogated physical law that we have above noted. 
But the necessities of the spiritual beings are such 
a rearrangement of spiritual conditions as shall 
result in reinstated fellowship. This is the funda- 
mental good which has been destroyed. If now 
the sinner will give up his sinful attitude, enter 
into a covenant fellowship in which he will sin 
no more, the destroyed good may be restored, at 
least so far as the future is concerned. What 
good will an awarded death or punishment of a 
repentant sinner accomplish? It only shows an 
implacable law-giver, and thus injures through 
memory future fellowship relations. While, on 
the other hand, free forgiveness will strengthen 
124 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

future fellowship relations through memory. The 
whole question seems to turn on the repentance 
of the sinner: will he cease from sin and begin 
a new life? If so, the necessities seem to be pro- 
vided for, although the old sin and its physical 
sequences has entered into the structure of the 
physical world. It is difficult to see that the in- 
fliction of penalty is a formal necessity. It is 
inflicted for the attainment of some ulterior end. 
Satisfactionists have claimed that it was for the 
satisfaction of the Divine Nature; others hold 
that it is a necessity of moral government. Miley, 
who upholds the governmental theory, says: 
" While divine penalty falls only upon sin, the 
supreme reason for its infliction is in the rectoral 
ends with which moral government is concerned. 
Nor is the penal infliction a moral necessity apart 
from those ends." ("Systematic Theology," ii, 
175.) If, then, the repentance and accepted new 
life of the sinner satisfies moral government as 
well as infliction of identical penalty, the necessity 
of the latter falls to the ground. 

Recently we heard the following illustration 
of reconciliation in an impassioned plea to sin- 
ners for repentance : A father had two sons. One 
was very wicked, and his father at last drove 
him from his house and disowned him. In the 
course of time the other son became sick and was 
nigh to death. In the meantime the prodigal son 
had reformed, and hearing of his brother's sick- 
ness, came and desired to see him. The pastor of 
the family made the request of the father ; but the 
125 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

privilege was refused. Finally the father granted 
it on the condition that he was not to meet the 
prodigal or come in contact with him in any way. 
The prodigal was ushered into the room where 
his brother was, and the two brothers were locked 
in each other 's arms in the demonstration of their 
affection. At last the prodigal said to the pastor, 
"I can not understand what my brother says; he 
wants something." Bending down close to the 
dying boy, the pastor made out that he wanted 
his father. He called him to the bedside. When 
he came the boy took his hand in one of his, and 
the prodigal's hand in the other, and then, with 
his dying strength, he asked his father to forgive 
him. At last he consented, threw his arms around 
his neck, and kissed him his forgiveness on the 
cheek. Then the pastor called to the father and 
said, "Your son is dead." 

"Without any qualification the preacher made 
this a picture of Jesus reconciling the Father and 
the prodigals of earth. An implacable Father ex- 
tends his hand, and his dying Son on the Cross 
takes it in one hand, and with the other takes the 
hand of humanity, and brings them together. 
This was his representation of Reconciliation. 
Is it not, although a revolting libel against the 
Father, a fair picture of that theology which 
teaches that God is angry, and must be reconciled 
by the death of his Son, so that he may forgive 
repentant sinners? 

We can not place in parallel with this any 
teaching of Jesus, for we do not remember that 
126 






FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

it ever occurred to him that the Heavenly Father 
had to be propitiated with his children. But 
surely the parable of the Prodigal Son, better 
named the parable of the Heavenly Father, deals 
with the problem of bringing Father and son to- 
gether, and the attitude that God takes when his 
child is willing to come back to him. How differ- 
ent is the scene from the one we have just related ! 
Not a word or hint of implacable alienation on 
the part of the Father ; not a word of a price to 
be paid by the son or by any one for the son ; not 
a word concerning the satisfaction of justice or 
the anarchy that will ensue in the home if the 
Father forgives his son without a sacrifice being 
made in his behalf ! If Jesus ever dealt with these 
specific problems, it was in this parable. His 
silence on these questions that have so greatly 
troubled theologians is eloquent in its denial of 
their conclusions. 

On the other hand, there is a word derivable 
from it that belongs to a former chapter. The 
parable is suggestive concerning the Limitations 
of the Atonement. The reconciliation between 
the father and the son does not restore the wasted 
property. The father says to the eldest son, "All 
that I have is thine." The original division of 
goods made at the demand of the younger son still 
stands. Atonement, reconciliation, restores the 
personal relations between God and the child ; but 
the waste of sin is not undone. The years have 
gone ; the substance is gone ; the spiritual powers 
that have suffered by deterioration and non- 
127 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

development remain so. The past is past; what 
was sown is now reaped. God does not abrogate 
the working of the laws of righteousness and re- 
ward. He only accepts the repentant child into 
fellowship and a new life. He must now begin 
again and work out a new life. The observation 
of this fact does away with many problems un- 
solvable in the traditional doctrine. 

Without contending about mere words we find 
that certain authors so interpret Scripture as to 
make the anger of God an insurmountable barrier 
to God taking the first step in atonement. We take 
as a sample the work of Dale, to whom we are 
indebted for many steps of progress on this sub- 
ject. He says : "It is easier for us to believe that 
God is angry with the sinful and impenitent than 
to believe that in any real sense he is hostile to 
them. Anger within certain limits is not incon- 
sistent with love. Indeed, the measure of our love 
for others is often the measure of anger against 
them when they do wrong. A comparative 
stranger may tell us a lie, and we may feel noth- 
ing but contempt and disgust; but if our own 
child, or a friend for whom we have strong affec- 
tion, tells us a lie, there is often intense anger as 
well as intense grief. That God should be angry 
with us, though he love us, is perfectly intelli- 
gible ; and we may even find it possible to believe 
that his anger may at last become so great that, 
if it were revealed, the revelation would utterly 
consume and destroy us. That he should be hos- 
tile to men on account of sin is not so easy to 
128 



FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

believe ; but unless we believe it we must suppress 
and reject a large portion of the teaching of the 
New Testament. . . . But to deny that he can 
be hostile to men on account of sin is to emascu- 
late and degrade our conception of him. He is 
not a mere "good-natured" God. His righteous- 
ness as well as his love is infinite." ("Atone- 
ment," 342-4.) 

It is evident that we are dealing here with the 
foundation elements in the atonement. Accord- 
ing to our estimate of the nature and the working 
of the anger of God will be our estimate of the 
possibility and necessary elements of the atone- 
ment. Accepting the word "anger," even the 
word "hostile" for the moment, and not contend- 
ing about words, what attitude toward reconcili- 
ation does this anger in God work? Does it make 
him implacable? Would he take the initiative to- 
ward restoration of fellowship, or does he rejoice 
in the opportunity now given of justly wiping out 
the race, or consigning it forever to non-fellow- 
ship with himself? There may be difficulties in 
the restoration of fellowship; would God gladly 
solve them? 

If this latter question is answered affirma- 
tively, then it seems clear that no sacrifice is nec- 
essary to satisfy the nature of God. Something 
may be necessary to satisfy justice or govern- 
ment, but if God wants the reconciliation brought 
about, then it is contradictory to say that a sacri- 
fice must be made before he in his feeling is willing 
to be reconciled to man. If this question is an- 
129 



THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

swered in the negative, then the foreknowledge of 
God becomes implicated in an absurdity. How 
could it be that God, if clothed with foreknowl- 
edge, created man, knowing that the time would 
come when he would wish to undo his work in 
creation and blot him out of existence? "We can 
not see the answer to this puzzle. 

Whatever the wrath of God may be, if it does 
not stand in the way of reconciliation, it will not 
support that idea of atonement which makes 
Christ a sacrifice to the nature of God. If God 
in his anger and grief over man's sin yet yearns 
for re-established fellowship, as we learn from 
the record that Jesus did, then all talk about a 
ransom being paid to him as a satisfaction to his 
feelings is without foundation. We do not for 
the moment take up the question of a need of 
a sacrifice for the sake of government; that does 
not relate itself to his wrath, but to his justice 
and the needs of government. 

But Dale pursues the argument further with 
a very forceful illustration, as if the concrete 
would force our assent where the abstract may 
fail. He says: "You have a child which is the 
light and joy of your home ; her voice is sweeter 
to you than any music, and her face is fairer and 
brighter than a summer 's morning. Her thoughts 
are as pure as mountain air ; her life is as stain- 
less as mountain snow. She is on the threshold 
of womanhood, and the very flower and perfec- 
tion of her loveliness have come. And a wretch, 
whose crime human language has no term black 
130 



FIEST STEP— PKOPITIATION. 

enough to describe, and human laws no punish- 
ment terrible enough to avenge — deliberately by 
hypocrisy, by lying, by a deep-laid scheme, 
worked out with elaborate cruelty — betrays her 
trust, ruins her virtue, and then flings her from 
him on the streets of a strange city. He has no 
compunction for his crime. If the opportunity 
comes again he will repeat it. Tell me now — 
What ought to be God's relation to such a man as 
that? Ought God to be at peace with him?" (Op. 
cit. 344.) 

One suspects that the purpose of working out 
such an elaborate horror as this is to arouse our 
feelings that they may violently control our judg- 
ment. There seems to be no dispute as to the 
question here asked. God ought to be angry with 
such a wretch. The question at issue is, What 
should God do about it? In answer to this ques- 
tion there should be no dispute as long as the 
wretch remains the same wretch he has been. But 
should God will that he shall forever remain that 
same wretch? Is God desirous that he should 
cease to be that wretch and become righteous? 
If so, what means shall be used to bring about the 
change? 

The un-Christian human heart has said, Let 
him be punished vindictively; let society wreak 
its anger out in his pain. Any thought of refor- 
mation has been lost sight of in the avenging pas- 
sion. But of what good is this vengeance ? Does 
it help righteousness even by an infinitesimal 
degree? It is hard to see that it does. A world 
131 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

run on that principle would only go from bad to 
worse; there is no ameliorating agency. 

What would God do in such circumstances? 
Would he simply be angry and vindictive, wreak 
his vengeance, and nothing more? At this point 
the answer becomes somewhat confused. Various 
passages of Scripture are quoted to indicate that 
God is angry as an ultimate solution, and that 
there is no desire on his part for the reformation 
of this wretch, and that he will take no steps to- 
ward it. We think we will get most light if we 
ask, What would Jesus do in these circumstances? 
Jesus is the revelation of the Father; what he 
would do the Father would do. 

Does any one question what Jesus would do? 
We can not forget that he was angry with sinners. 
He excoriated unrepentant Pharisees fearfully. 
His wrath is unquestionable. But would he turn 
to a repentant sinner and say that the holiness 
of God must be vindicated before he can be for- 
given ; that there is a resentful feeling in the heart 
of God which must be satisfied before a sinner 
can be forgiven? It is impossible to think this. 
It is just as impossible to think that the Father 
would say this. If the holiness and justice of God 
are spoken of, it needs only to be mentioned in 
order to be seen that holiness is the gainer the 
moment this wretch ceases to be a wretch and be- 
comes such an one as would not repeat his crime 
if an opportunity were given. If by making the 
first move and securing the repentance of this 
sinner, and then getting him to accept a new na- 
132 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

ture, righteousness of character become his, holi- 
ness has everything to gain and nothing to lose; 
society (government) is protected for the future, 
and every interest, except the exercise of mere 
hate, is secured. And at the same time this is not 
to say that certain consequences of his crime, 
fixed in the automatic working of law, will not fol- 
low forever this man who sinned. 

It is a very common statement that Christ's 
death removes the anger of God. Many authors 
agree in saying that Christ by his death appeased 
whatever there is in God which the Bible calls 
"anger." Is this true either to the Bible or to 
life? If the doctrine of satisfaction were true 
this would follow logically. If it is not true in 
fact, then the doctrine of satisfaction as the prem- 
ise of the argument must fall to the ground. 

We do not question but that the Cross has 
changed the feelings of God ; but we raise the dis- 
tinct question, Has the fact of the death of Christ 
accomplished in any way or to any degree a 
change in God's feelings toward the sinner! Is 
God any more reconciled to the unrepentant sin- 
ner than he would have been if Christ had not 
died? In what sense does God feel differently to- 
ward the sinner now from what he did before 
Christ died? In what sense is he reconciled to 
the sinner since the Cross that he was not before? 
Or, if the anticipation of the Cross be held by 
any one to have availed for the sinners before 
Calvary, then we press the question, In what 
sense is God changed in his feelings toward sin- 
133 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ners that he would not have been if the Cross 
was not considered?* 

We believe that God is just as angry with 
the sinner as he ever was, or ever would have 
been. Christ's death has not affected in the least 
his feelings toward the impenitent sinner, unless 
it be that he is more deeply grieved that even a 
"love unto death" does not move him, and thus 
is more deeply angry than if there had been no 
cross. Christ's death in itself, apart from the 
sinner's repentance, does not affect in the least 
the status of a sinner before God, unless to bring 
him to a greater condemnation. Without repent- 
ance God and the sinner are just as alienated as 
they ever could be. Those who accept this con- 
clusion must forever abandon the position that 
the Cross in itself is a satisfaction for the sin- 
ner's sin or a payment of the sinner's debt. 

God may be angry with a sinner and loving to- 
ward him at the same time. 

"Love and anger are indeed opposites, and 

*Campbell has answered our question as follows: "If God 
provides the atonement, then forgiveness must precede atonement; 
and tha atonement must be the form of the manifestation of 
the forgiving love of God, not its cause. ... An atonement 
to make God gracious, to move him to compassion, to turn his 
heart toward those from whom sin had alienated his love, it would, 
indeed, be difficult to believe in; for if it were needed it would 
be impossible. . . . The Scriptures represent the love of, God 
as the cause, and the atonement as the effect. 'God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten Son.' " ("Nature of the 
Atonement," 16, 17.) If we then should press the question, 
Why, then, should there be an atonement if we have forgiveness 
without it? this author answers, That we can believe in the love 
of God when manifested in the atonement easier than we could 
in the clemency of God without any such manifestation. 

134 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

wrath may become hate and destroy love. But 
such is not fatherly love and, by consequence, 
can not be the love of God. ' God is love ; ' and 
because he is love, his love co-exists with his 
wrath against sinners, is the very life of that 
wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath as 
its instrument, while at the same time it seeks 
and supplies a propitiation. The wrath of God 
is the side of his love which is turned toward the 
sin that defeats his purpose and renounces his fel- 
lowship, and towards those who make themselves 
one with it." (Lidgett, "Spiritual Principle of 
the Atonement," 251.) 

The Bible pictures God as angry with sin and 
sinners; it also testifies that he loves the world 
in its sinful condition. Are these two statements 
compatible, and how may we understand them? 
If compatible, what would be the attitude of God 
toward reconciliation? Would his anger stand in 
the way of reconciliation until some atonement 
for sin was made? 

These questions are closely related to our 
problem; how shall we estimate them? Can we 
discover in the human parent a condition that is 
comparable to this? 

A father is grieved and angry with his child 
who has sinned against him. This, however, does 
not destroy his love for his child. It is only when 
the course of sin has been long prolonged, and he 
has lost hope that he will ever be changed, his 
patience being exhausted, that his anger becomes 
implacable and he drives the child from his home. 
135 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

What is the father's attitude toward reconcilia- 
tion? Is his anger of that kind which refuses to 
take the first step toward reconciliation? Much 
depends upon what kind of a father he is ; but in 
our judgment a father that will take this position 
is not a fit illustration of the Heavenly Father. 
Nevertheless, when reconciliation is effected, the 
father may yet feel that the legitimate conse- 
quences of sin should not be lifted. This is not 
an impeachment of his love ; it is but an expres- 
sion of his sense of what is for the best not only 
for bis child, but for all his children. It does not 
impeach love; it illustrates it. This child, al- 
though forgiven and in fellowship, may still need 
the discipline of the law involved. 

If the suffering of Christ was not for the pur- 
pose of propitiating the wrath of the Father, what 
relation, then, had it to reconciliation? We hold 
that Christ's suffering was a necessary implica- 
tion of the revelation of the Father's love for 
man, and was not a sacrifice made to the wrath 
of God that would render him placable to man in 
atonement. In the following quotation Dale pre- 
sents the two views of Christ's suffering, allowing 
the exegetical correctness of our view, but reject- 
ing it on traditional grounds: "Christ's ultimate 
object was 'to bring us to God. ' It would be per- 
fectly consistent with the apostolic conception of 
our Lord's death, if in these words St. Peter had 
intended to describe its effects upon the moral 
and spiritual life, inspiring us with penitence for 
sin, and constraining us to trust in the Divine 
136 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

mercy, and to return to our true home in the Di- 
vine presence. But I doubt whether this would 
be a legitimate interpretation of the language. 
'That he might bring us to God' suggests the con- 
ferring of a new dignity and privilege, rather 
than the creating of a new disposition. It recalls 
the idea of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephe- 
sians (2 : 18), that through Christ Jew and Gentile 
have ' access to the Father,' an idea expressed in 
another form in the Epistle to the Romans (5:2), 
'By whom we have access into this grace wherein 
we stand.' The guilt which hindered our access 
to God has been atoned for, and we are no longer 
excluded from the honor and blessing of ap- 
proaching him." (Op. cit. 137.) 

The difference of view between holding that a 
past sin shuts us out from the presence of God 
until it is atoned for, and the view that God 
is always ready to hear a penitent sinner is fun- 
damental. If a sin must be atoned before God 
will treat with us, then there is no apparent way 
by which we can ever get back to God. That a 
Second Person of the Trinity should be so differ- 
ently disposed from the First as to undertake the 
atonement, seems to us a violent disruption of 
the Trinitarian Nature, a doctrine leading to 
an inharmonious Tri theism; and man alone is in 
no condition to make any other atonement than 
repentance. 

Why did Jesus die ? The Scriptures have dif- 
ferent phrases answering this question. Is it pos- 
sible for us to put a meaning into them, and the 
137 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

same meaning into them all, a meaning consistent 
in all cases? 

He died for us. "Christ died for our sins." 
(1 Cor. 15:3.) What do these words mean? 
Were our sins his sins ? No ; in him was no sin. 
Was the guilt of our sins his guilt? There is 
no known principle in the spiritual world by 
which guilt may be transferred from one person 
to another. Did he die in consequence of our 
sins? Yes; that is possible. One man may in- 
volve another in death by his sin. If this is the 
Scripture meaning we may construe an explana- 
tion. What shall it be? 

When one by sin involves another in death, 
then the second man must in some way be related 
to the first, either voluntarily or by nature or 
accident, that his death should follow. We as 
human beings are so tied together that one can 
not fall without dragging others down. Is that 
the way Jesus' death is involved in our sin? If 
we accept it tentatively, then it is proper to in- 
quire concerning the author of this arrangement 
and its purpose. 

We are assuming that Jesus was the eternal 
Logos, and hence was not fundamentally involved 
in the general consequences of sin by his nature. 
He was outside of the historic human family, and 
might have remained outside forever, if he had 
not chosen to come inside. His coming into his- 
toric unity with men was a voluntary matter on 
the part of some one. In the volition that brought 
him into the world, did he act independently from 
138 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

the Father? Was his attitude toward sinful 
humanity different from the Father's? Did he 
love humanity, and the Father hate humanity? 
(John 3: 16.) 

The pre-incarnation determination to become 
incarnate carried with it a necessity and obliga- 
tion of undergoing all that came to Christ in his 
human career. He must not shrink from any- 
thing that any human being would have had to 
meet in his circumstances. He must hunger for 
food, because he was poor; he must be weary, 
because his life was to be full of toil ; he must be 
misunderstood and unappreciated, because his 
task was above ordinary comprehension ; he must 
meet the deadly enmity of men, because his work 
was an opposition to theirs. He must at last 
suffer desertion of his followers and death upon 
the cross, because the enmity against him would 
reach that pitch. 

Because he was a perfect human being, his 
sympathies with suffering humanity, snared in 
sin and wretchedness, would load him more with 
sympathetic sorrow than any one else could ever 
feel. He must feel alone upon the cross, because 
the experience through which he was passing in- 
evitably led to that condition. The Father re- 
quired all this, because anything else than this 
would have been less than was normal to the con- 
dition and task. He could not escape the "cup" 
without drinking it : for it was all implied in the 
mission for reconciliation that he had entered 
upon. But it is not necessary to think that all 
139 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

this was required to satisfy the mere feeling of 
justice in the Father. Of course, we may use that 
language from our point of view. It would not 
have been just to have taken the human condition 
and then sidetrack the consequences by some 
miraculous interposition. He must drink the cup 
of human suffering to the dregs, but only because 
the human condition was a necessity for the rev- 
elation of the heart of God to man. 

We feel that it is impossible to hold that there 
was any difference of sentiment or affection or 
attitude or purpose in the volition of the Son and 
the volition of the Father. The incarnation was 
not an independent act of the Son, not an act con- 
trary to the Father's will or feeling. There was 
no dissension in the Trinity concerning it. 

What was the purpose of this Incarnation and 
all that is involved in it, including the death of 
Christ ? The idea of remission of sins is involved. 
The restoration of fellowship between man and 
God is perhaps as general a statement as we can 
make in answer. Did this restoration imply the 
removal of man's guilt before the Father would 
enter into relation? We greatly doubt that view. 
1. It is not the picture that the Bible gives us 
of the Father. 2. We do not see that guilt ever 
is removed from the sinner. He may be forgiven, 
in the sense that fellowship is established again. 
But he is the same sinner still, so far as being 
the one who committed the transgression. Paul 
calls himself in his old age "the chief of sinners." 
The only change that is possible is the change that 
140 



FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

repentance brings, a change of mind. Does the 
Father require more than this? How shall we 
know, unless we ask: Does Jesus require more 
than this? Does not Jesus reveal the Father? 
Does the Father demand more in the way of ex- 
piation than the Son? To affirm this brings very 
grave consequences. 

Bishop Merrill makes much of the point that 
the atonement was not payment of the penalty due 
for sin, but only its suspension. The idea seems 
to be that in case of the wicked the penalty is de- 
ferred, probation is renewed under another 
scheme, that of redemption; but that if they do 
not repent, believe upon Jesus and obey him, then 
after death the full penalty will be exacted. In 
case of the righteous, if they accept Christ and 
obey him, then the penalty is never exacted, and 
the suspension becomes permanent. ("Atone- 
ment," 133 et passim.) 

If this idea is noted carefully it will be seen 
that that which actually lifts the penalty is the 
repentance and obedience of the sinner. The 
death of Christ performs the necessary part in 
making the action of the sinner possible, but it 
is not in itself an expiation of sin. There is no 
special ground of objection to such a view if it can 
be shown that it serves any necessary purpose. 
As an exhibition of divine love it would exalt 
him and be a ground for our praise. But why is 
it necessary to bring the death of Christ as a 
legal consideration for any such purpose? Can 
not God suspend the penalty of the sinner at any 
141 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

time and until any time and under any conditions 
attached without demanding the death of Christ 
as a consideration or a motive? We fail to see 
any obstruction to the divine love and wisdom 
from the side of his own administration. We can 
distinctly see the objections which man's unbe- 
lief and disobedience throw in the way ; but these 
exhaust the obstructions. In relation to himself 
God may do as seemeth him best. We can not see 
that the death of Christ was necessary to make 
himself willing to remit the penalty entirely. So 
this distinction of suspending the penalty through 
the death of Christ serves no actual necessity, and 
may be put aside. 

When the Apostle Paul affirms that we are not 
under law, but under grace, he makes this great 
distinction which writers of a mere natural re- 
ligion could not deal with. We must construe this 
statement that we are not to be justified on the 
basis of law. So it is futile to plead for the con- 
ditions of legal satisfaction, if in the start we are 
told that our pardon is not legal, but gracious 
and filial. "If there had been a law given which 
could have given life, verily righteousness should 
have been by the law. " "He that believeth hath 
passed from death unto life." We are dealing 
here not with the dead things as of a legal rela- 
tion which is confined to outward just relation- 
ships, but with a vital process which enters into 
the deeps of nature and re-creates and makes fit 
for a companionship with God which the new 
relation of reconciliation outwardly announces. 
142 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

"IF Christ's satisfaction were merely rendered 
to law so that its penalty might be withdrawn, 
as the more extreme governmental views would 
represent, then the appropriation of the benefits 
of that satisfaction would naturally bear a legal 
character also, and salvation would be defined as 
an acceptance of the fact that Christ had dis- 
charged our obligations for us. " ( Stevens, ' ' The 
Pauline Theology," 256.) This is, indeed, the 
key to salvation as presented by all satisfaction- 
ists. It is the acceptance of a legal fiction rather 
than the transformation of a life. 

The historic atonement of Christianity gathers 
about the suffering of Jesus. The great central 
question which the mind of man through all these 
Christian centuries has been trying to solve is, 
Why did Jesus suffer? 

Dale ("Atonement," 396) asks, "Is there any 
* immorality' and 'crime,' anything to provoke a 
'cry of indignant shame,' in the resolve of God 
himself, in the person of Christ, to endure suffer- 
ing instead of inflicting it?" The quoted words 
are from Martineau. (" Studies of Christianity, ' ' 
188.) 

There does not seem to be any possibility of 
answering this question in the affirmative. And 
those of us who accept the deity of Christ must 
agree that Jesus suffered by the appointment of 
God, and that his sufferings do secure our release 
from sufferings. These facts are admitted. But 
this general answer to the question, Why did 
Jesus suffer? admits of further analysis, and it 
143 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

is in the detailed implications where present-day 
opinion divides. Was this God-appointed suffer- 
ing to placate the wrath of God? Was it to 
satisfy a legal demand? Was it to reveal the 
love of God? Was it to take the place in a legal 
way of the sufferings of the sinner, whose penal- 
ties are thereby ipso facto released, as by the hy- 
pothesis of satisfaction they must be? 

We are ready to conclude that Jesus suffered 
because he came to a certain task, and men killed 
him in its accomplishment. In this, from the 
standpoint of human history, his fate was like 
the fate of good men in all ages among all peoples 
from the beginning of the world, whenever they 
tried to right great wrongs. But further, from 
the standpoint of divine history and purpose, it 
was to reveal to the world the love of the Father, 
which could not otherwise be known in complete- 
ness, which revelation it is necessary that man 
should know in order that he may trust a God 
whom he has offended. It was a further conse- 
quence of the social construction of the world, so 
that whoever enters into human history suffers 
for the sins of the world in proportion to his own 
holiness and his efforts to rid the world of sin. 
There may be other reasons, all of which, when 
fully known, will be found fully to harmonize, and 
each one the complement and implication of the 
others. But other alleged reasons, such as: To 
placate the wrath of God ; to pay a price in satis- 
faction for a legal demand; to furnish a substi- 
tute for the pains and penalties due to the sinner, 
144 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

we can no longer believe. Under increasing light 
and deeper insight and profounder study we find 
the trend of our conviction definitely and de- 
cidedly away from these positions which was our 
theological inheritance. 

We can find no law in our nature or discover 
any in the Divine Nature, as manifested either in 
revelation or in life that demands these latter 
positions. They are the inventions of the human 
mind under the darkness of an obscured and per- 
verted sense of justice. Advance in human gov- 
ernment is revealing the fact that they are dis- 
pensable and even pernicious ideas. Dinsmore 
says it is a "sure instinct of our nature" that 
"there can be no forgiveness where love does not 
work in such a way as to satisfy the strictest 
demands of conscience and meet every require- 
ment of perfect repentance." ("Atonement in 
Literature and Life," 178.) We find ourselves 
in harmony with that statement. We shall fol- 
low it as the limit of demand, and seek to work 
out our problem in such a way as to meet it. Our 
objection to the Satisfaction theory is that it ex- 
ceeds it in some respects and violates it in others. 
The author just quoted represents the authors of 
that theory as follows: "Anselm does not dwell 
on the extent of the Savior's sufferings, nor on 
his death as a substituted penalty, but this con- 
ception naturally grows out of his thought, and 
was seized upon and elaborated by Aquinas and 
the Schoolmen. They taught that the vicarious 
work of Christ was the real and absolute equiva- 
10 145 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

lent for that which the transgressor owes to God 
and his justice. Sin is a debt which Christ and 
his redeemed pay to the full. The scales balance, 
and perfect justice is done." (Op. cit. 176, 177.) 
This author finds the sources of this notion of 
satisfaction among the teachings of the Greeks; 
among others in Sophocles' "(Edipus:" "There 
is no atonement, no reconciliation with God, until 
justice has been done. What will satisfy divine 
justice? What will expiate sin? The answer we 
find in CEdipus is that it is suffering endured sub- 
missively until the heart is purified and the will 
subdued. Sufferings thus borne propitiate the 
moral indignation of the gods and man." (Op. cit. 
66.) And again: "Forgiveness to be genuine 
must be so bestowed that moral obligations re- 
ceive no diminution. The many forms in which 
this intuitive belief is expressed add impressive- 
ness to the unanimity of the testimony. In Dante 
the sanction of the eternal justice is maintained by 
the infliction of a penalty equivalent to the enor- 
mity of the sin, Christ bearing the eternal retri- 
bution and sinners the temporal pains. Thus God 

MAKES THE SCALES BALANCE ERE HE FORGIVES. In 

"CEdipus Tyrannus" sufferings not commensu- 
rate but adequate to demonstrate the inviolability 
of the divine decrees are inflicted. ^Eschylus 
presents another phase of satisfaction when he 
describes Orestes, a righteous man, enduring vi- 
cariously the consequences of the transgressions 
of others and by obedience and sorrow setting at 
rest the Furies of retributive justice. This is 
146 



FIEST STEP— PEOPITIATION. 

still more strongly asserted in the remarkable 
passage at the close of "Prometheus Bound:" 

Do not look 
For any end, moreover, of this curse, 
Or ere some god appear to accept thy pangs 
On his own head vicarious, and descend 
With unreluctant steps the darks of hell 
And gloomy abysses around Tartarus. 

(E. B. Browning's trans.) (Op. cit. 161.) 

As these quotations are extended from extra - 
Christian thinkers we begin to feel that, although 
the word "atonement" is used to describe them, 
these are plans of reconciliation in which the 
great factor in Christian atonement is omitted, 
namely, the love of God. Their schemes are 
based on ideals of commercial exchange or plans 
of government where sheer balanced rights are 
all that come into view. As such they do not 
illustrate, but rather darken the whole problem 
before us. Without the love of God, which is 
willing to suffer for what the sinner has done 
without compensation, suffer sympathetically, 
suffer vicariously, we see no possible basis for a 
reconciliation between God and man. If God is 
not willing to take the first step, and man can not, 
the matter ends in futility. These schemes of 
atonement are not based upon mercy at all ; they 
are simply demands of court justice, with a 
Heavenly Father left out, which an indifferent 
and tactful God might devise, but hardly the God 
that is revealed in the New Testament When 
147 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the scales of legal exchange are exactly balanced 
there is no demand nor place for forgiveness ; the 
demand for an atonement has not come. So we 
find nothing in these ideas that may furnish a 
foundation for Christian atonement. We must 
begin with Christian ideas and lay a foundation 
ere we can proceed. Nevertheless, we shall hold 
ourselves not to something less than court jus- 
tice; if we do not produce a system which will 
manifest a higher and deeper justice than this 
derived from the Greeks, it will stand self-con- 
demned. 

How can God be holy and just and forgive the 
sinner? We conceive that the intricacy of this 
problem grows out of the past. Wrong deeds 
committed are in the past. If God should forgive 
those sins in the sense that he should pronounce 
them just and justified, then I think there could 
be no solution of the problem. That would be an 
annulment of his holiness. 

But if we leave those sins just as they are, 
with God's condemnation upon them, and the sin- 
ner by repentance and confession pronounces his 
condemnation upon them, then the remaining 
problem is only one of determining what treat- 
ment shall be meted out to the sinner. If he is 
still sinful in character and purpose, then he can 
not be treated as righteous without an annulment 
of God 's holiness. But if he changes his mind by 
repentance, and God changes his nature by re- 
generating him — a change which the sinner ac- 
cepts from God — then it is difficult to see in what 
148 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

way God is obliged to treat him in any way save 
that which will contribute to holiness. It is 
readily seen that to take him into fellowship is an 
expedient more productive of holiness of life 
than for God to thrust him away. God and the 
sinner are now at-one in their estimate of the past 
deeds. There was a time when the sinner justified 
them, defended them, practiced them, defied God 
regarding them. But now he has accepted the 
Divine estimate of them and renounced them by 
confession and repentance. More can not be done 
regarding the moral standard for the past and the 
future. The sinner has accepted the Divine esti- 
mate of holiness for character or being by accept- 
ing the new nature which is offered him. By this 
he renounces himself as he has been, he justifies 
God in regard to himself; his new nature is the 
best and only adequate pledge of conformity to 
the divine standard for the future that can be 
conceived or provided. Crimination and suffer- 
ing can not add to these demands for holiness; 
at-one-ment has been made. 

For God to annul the sinner's debt toward a 
third person without the consent of that third 
person would not be just; but for him to annul 
the debt which now never can be paid toward 
himself and take the pain of it to himself, is en- 
tirely within his right, and there can be no objec- 
tion to it from any source if the new life of right- 
eousness may be secured. 

For God to demand anything further as an 
evidence of his own holiness is not required : for 
149 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

God has continually maintained his holiness. His 
standard of righteousness has never changed, 
and it is now accepted by the sinner. His char- 
acter of righteousness is maintained when he 
takes the pain of the sin into himself, and the sin- 
ner accepts from his hand a nature that will do 
the same thing. How this pain of sin has been 
taken into himself we have seen under the thought 
of tne Vicarious principle which rules in all life. 
"God is not a death-loving Gorgon, to be de- 
lighted by the smell of blood. It is a brutal bur- 
lesque to suppose that the death of Jesus was a 
sacrifice needed to put him in a forgiving humor. 
Even the ancient singers of Israel knew God bet- 
ter. 

'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, 
A broken and a contrite heart, God, thou 
wilt not despise.' " 

(Ascham, "Help from the Hills," 196.) 

This leaves the work of atonement as that in- 
fluence, however produced, which secures the will- 
ingness of the sinner to give up his sin, enter into 
a new life and communion with God, and accept 
the new nature. For this we must accredit any 
work done by Jesus, whether of teaching, or life, 
or of death, that exerts an influence in that di- 
rection. 

The major premise of the Satisfaction theory 
of atonement is the assumption that God's anger 
must be appeased, or his outraged nature must 
be satisfied before he will grant forgiveness. This 
is probably regarded as axiomatic ; for it is hardly 
150 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

demonstrable. It may be based upon an appeal to 
our own nature or feelings when wronged, it being 
taken for granted that our moral nature is illus- 
trative of the divine Nature. It is admissible 
that apart from revelation the human spirit 
is the only source of light that falls upon the 
workings of the divine Spirit. But we must note 
carefully what is the testimony of our own con- 
sciousness under the experience of wrong from 
another. Do we require compensation? This 
question must evidently be answered affirmatively 
when the wrongdoer has ability to compensate. 
This demand is evidently finally based upon the 
fact that any change of mind from the attitude 
of a wrongdoer requires an adequate expression. 
A verbal expression of contrition for a wrong 
done, when a material expression is possible, 
would be regarded as hypocrisy and a fraud. 
But, on the other hand, is our spirit implacable 
when the sinner is without ability to make com- 
pensation? Do we insist on punishment of a mere 
vindictive nature? This is more than doubtful. 
Such a demand is estimated not as an expression 
of a normal human nature, but of one that has 
become depraved by hatred and sin. The heart 
that forgives when nothing beyond a sincere re- 
pentance is possible on the part of the sinner is 
applauded by the universal judgment of mankind. 
So we think that the witness of the human spirit 
to the doctrine of satisfaction will be found to 
give the most indubitable evidence against it. 
''The God and Father of Jesus Christ could 
151 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

never be content to thunder the sinner down. He 
will not by the exercise of irresistible power hurl 
the sinner headlong to Hell. Hell, if that be all 
there is to it, is a confession of moral inability 
and bankruptcy on God's part, just as the old- 
fashioned State's prison is a confession of bank- 
ruptcy on the part of the free State. God for- 
gives the sinner. By the sweetness and strength 
of his grace he keeps his foothold within the will 
of the offender. And so the sinner, awakening to 
the dread and terror of his sin, finds his will en- 
closed by the divine will. ... If God can not 
do as much as this, he can do less than we. . . . 
The law includes forgiveness as its method of ad- 
ministration. . . . When our friends sin against 
us, we know there is but one thing for us to do. 
Through forgiveness we must maintain in the 
heart of the offender the ideal he has injured. 
... If the innocent party refuses to forgive, 
what has he done? Thrown up the fight for hu- 
man perfection because of his wounds. . . . With- 
out forgiveness the Moral Law, when recognized 
as the relation between personal beings, denies 
itself. ... If God, sinned against, holds him- 
self aloof, guards himself within his majesty and 
holiness, he resigns his right of creative guidance. 
He gainsays himself if he waits to be propitiated. 
The forgiveness is wrought out in silence. . . . 
If morality were an abstract code, God would 
stand helpless before sin. . . . Forgiveness alone 
makes a full repentance possible." (Nash, "The 
Atoning Life," 111-113.) 
152 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

Whether Paul was consistent with himself in 
all his teaching we will not at this juncture try- 
to prove ; but it is evident that 2 Cor. 5 : 18-20 
contains his thought in complete form, that rec- 
onciliation of man to God is the purpose of 
Christ's coming. God did it. He does not hint 
that man must reconcile God, or that something 
propitiatory had to be done before God could be 
reconciled to man. 

A study of the problem of the necessary ele- 
ments in atonement will involve a study of the 
science of criminology, or the reformation of the 
sinner. Views concerning this have greatly 
changed in recent years, though it can hardly be 
said that universal or catholic opinion has yet 
been attained. Ancient society dealt with the 
criminal on the basis of vindication or self- 
defense. Punishment was exemplary for the pur- 
pose of inspiring fear to commit crime. It is now 
doubted whether this principle was ever effective. 
Brutality and severity in punishment increased 
crime rather than deterred it, as may be seen 
from the criminal records in English history.* 
Thus it was not an effective preservative prin- 
ciple. It is now believed that reformation of all 
save the hopelessly incorrigible is the correct aim 



*Society has gradually given up retributive punishments be- 
cause people have seen that they neither awaken the feeling of 
guilt nor act as a deterrent, but on the contrary retribution 
applied by equal to equal brutalizes the ideas of right, hardens 
the temper, and stimulates the victim to exercise the same vio- 
lence toward others that has been endured by himself. (Ellen 
Key: "The Century of the Child," 135.) 

153 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

in punishment. Even as a defensive and self- 
preservative measure society protects itself best 
by reforming the criminal. Paley says, "The 
proper end of human punishment is not the satis- 
faction of justice, but the prevention of crimes." 

It is probable that this old view of criminology 
has had much to do with theological teaching con- 
cerning methods of an atonement. Just as men 
thought that society must protect itself by exem- 
plary punishment, so they thought that God must 
protect his moral universe by exemplary punish- 
ment. Either the sinner in his own person or 
Jesus in his stead must suffer the penalty of the 
law, or government would be endangered. 

As society is changing its mind concerning 
the practical question, so theologians are likely to 
have a changed estimate concerning the necessity 
of punishment as a vindication of government. 
This estimate is a fundamental factor concerning 
our question — the problem of atonement. When 
it is believed that repentance and regeneration 
vindicate and protect the divine government suf- 
ficiently, one of the traditional demands for the 
1 ' Cross " as a satisfaction will have passed away. 
Conviction may yet be divided concerning this 
fundamental proposition. The old idea of the 
function of justice may yet hold its place in many 
minds. We trust we have made clear the line 
where that division will be drawn. 

In exploring the sources of a doctrine, atmos- 
phere is everything. An atmosphere may have 
154 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

much to justify it, aud yet incidentally there may 
have drifted into it a doctrine which will grow 
and spread and dominate theology long after the 
healthfulness of the atmosphere in which it arose 
has changed to malaria. The atmosphere in 
which the substitution theory of the atonement 
arose was that of Divine Sovereignty. This Sov- 
ereignty was regarded as almost, if not quite, ir- 
responsible from a moral point of view. What- 
ever God willed to do was not to be questioned. 
In justification of such a viewpoint it may be said, 
justly, that if we had an unmistakable indication 
that God had willed to do something, we might in 
any age safely assume that it was right, whether 
its justice could be discerned by us or not. But 
such knowledge was not vouchsafed, and theolo- 
gians were but seeking to know what a righteous 
God would will. But without this direct knowl- 
edge his Sovereignty was assumed to be absolute, 
and this in spite of the assertion of man's free- 
dom and the evident exercise of it in the produc- 
tion of sin and suffering, all of which would have 
to be charged to God, if he were absolute. Any 
implication of such a sovereignty was accepted 
prima facie as righteous and not to be questioned. 
Moreover, this sovereignty was estimated in 
physical rather than in moral terms, and the 
dominance of the moral over the physical was not 
observed. 

Hence the conceptions of an Eastern sovereign 
visiting his wrath against an offending subject 
155 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

was the starting point of the atonement concep- 
tion. Out of such a fundamental view the satis- 
faction theory was a fairly logical deduction. 

In the broad question of satisfaction for sin 
we may distinguish a difference between a satis- 
faction rendered to justice and such a satisfaction 
as may be required to receive forgiveness. For- 
giveness of an unrepentant and rebellious sinner 
is hardly a demand of the law of love, nor is it 
conceivable that any benefit can flow from it. It 
seems more like indifference to moral action than 
any beneficent attitude in a moral ruler. So that 
there may be some satisfaction demanded from 
the sinner before forgiveness can be exercised. 
This satisfaction need not be such an adjustment 
of the situation that moral and legal debts are 
paid, but only such an attitude of the spirit as 
will make forgiveness available and beneficial. 
Repentance answers every demand of such a sat- 
isfaction, such a denunciation of the wrong deed 
on the part of the sinner that he and the sinned 
against are now in perfect accord concerning the 
wrong that was done and the righteous claims of 
the sinned against. This is the Scriptural thought 
contained in the words, "death unto sin." This 
will furnish a basis of renewed fellowship and 
communion, the only morally urgent necessity of 
the case. 

But, on the other hand, this satisfaction need 
not go so far as to make a full restitution. When 
it does, forgiveness means nothing. Reconcilia- 
tion on such a basis is the demand of justice, and 
156 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

forgiveness is emptied of its graciousness. Says 
Nash: "If the divine forgiveness is conditioned 
on propitiation, then it ceases to be free forgive- 
ness. It is not forgiveness in the full sense. If 
propitiation is first made, then forgiveness must 
follow as a matter of fair dealing. If God did 
not forgive, he would be unjust. God does not, 
then, forgive freely. His forgiveness is earned. ' ' 
("The Atoning Life," 111.) 

The force of this distinction has been felt, but 
incorrectly stated, by those satisfactionists who 
have drawn back from the idea of full legal satis- 
faction. They have seen that God did not exact 
the full identical payment of the debt, but has 
accepted a substitute for the payment. To this 
view has been given such names as "substitute 
for penalty," "accepted substitute," etc. It has 
been supported by the general principle that God 
might in the exercise of his sovereign will make 
anything that pleased him an accepted substi- 
tute for the penalty which Justice required. Thus 
the distinction is based upon an arbitrary choice 
rather than upon an inevitable and discernible 
principle. It is but one step from this position 
to the one which allows God to do away with any- 
thing whatever as a substitute for penalty and 
forgive sinners freely without condition. 

None of these ideas are fully logical. If the 
demand is made on grounds of justice, nothing but 
complete payment of the legal debt satisfies that 
demand. But if, on the other hand, the demand 
is for nothing more than supplying a necessary 
157 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

element in the operation of forgiveness, then the 
satisfaction is rendered not by God to his own 
sense of justice, but by man in assuming an atti- 
tude which allows God to forgive. Every arbi- 
trary element is eliminated from the transaction, 
and only inevitable conditions are respected. 

Of the reconciliation of such abstract attri- 
butes as Justice we do not take serious account. 
This has been a method of treating the subject 
that has influenced theologians through long ages. 
But we hold it to have no validity whatever. One 
author, writing on the basis of the satisfaction 
theory, says (we need not give the reference, for 
he speaks after the manner of countless others) : 
"God was gracious, and mercifully inclined to 
reconciliation prior to any step being taken in 
that direction. His love of pity yearned for the 
restoration of the alienated, and moved the plan 
that would satisfy the demands of justice and 
holiness. Of his predisposition to reconciliation 
there can be no question. No sacrifice was neces- 
sary to induce that. ' ' Happy would it have been 
for our preaching if we had never been instructed 
to go any further than this. It did not seem to 
occur to many that the additions which they made 
to this were in irreconcilable contradiction to it. 
If no satisfaction were needed to gain God's pre- 
disposition to reconciliation, what, then, does de- 
mand it? The following quotation will answer: 
"If unbending justice demanded satisfaction in 
order to the outflow of his compassion, then the 
legal obstructions to forgiveness must be re- 
158 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

moved; and the removing of them is the turning 
away of his wrath, well and forcibly expressed as 
the reconciliation of the Father." Where is this 
"Unbending justice?" It could not be in the 
Father, for we have seen by this author that no 
sacrifice was needed to " induce his predisposition 
to reconciliation." No; it was some imperson- 
ated justice that seems to stand between the free 
forgiveness which is in the heart of God and the 
sinner. 

This hypostatizing of Justice as an obstruc- 
tion to the free exercise of the Father's sponta- 
neous desire and disposition is thoroughly mis- 
leading and indefensible. Whose justice is it 
that stands in the way? If anybody's, it must be 
the justice of God. Then we have one of God's 
attributes by hypothesis separated from himself 
and standing in the road of his action as a com- 
plete being, so that he can not act as he would. 
This is absurd. The situation is: One element 
in the Divine Nature so opposes other elements 
in his Nature that he can not act in the line of 
his primal impulsion. In other words, consider- 
ing now the action of his total Being, he can not 
act in the line of love and mercy and reconcili- 
ation. It is false, then, to say that God desires 
reconciliation or that "his love of pity yearned 
for the restoration of the alienated." 

But this representation is untenable. He de- 
sired what he was predisposed to. His nature, as 
ours, acted in totality and was not distracted by 
contending elements. Justice is not something ex- 
159 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ternal to himself to which he must give heed in 
contradiction to his own desires. His justice is 
not different from his love. It demands nothing 
that his love does not demand. We can not think 
of God as acting thus by sections. His whole 
Being acts in thorough harmony with itself. 

Moreover, he is not, as we are, bound to some 
external standard or consideration. There is 
nothing above him more just than he is himself. 
He can act freely from the impulses of his own 
Nature without reference to anything as a stand- 
ard beside himself, and his action will be perfectly 
just and loving and wise toward all possible be- 
ings. We must get done with this fiction of le- 
gality as covering or constraining the action of 
God. The only law that he needs to observe or 
consider is the law of love and holiness and jus- 
tice written in his own heart. What it says he 
may do with no dire results to any scheme of gov- 
ernment or laws of a universe or anything of that 
kind. This same reasoning will also be adequate 
to dispose of the claims of satisfaction of a gov- 
ernment. No government has any claims of jus- 
tice as opposed to the free working of his own 
Nature. His Nature is the foundation of all gov- 
ernment. Perfect justice in government will en- 
sue from the outworkings of his own desire and 
will. "If the Eternal Father is satisfied, then 
must the Judge of all the earth be satisfied, — the 
provision which secures the fulfillment of the 
Father's heart must secure the highest ends of 
rectoral government." (Campbell, "Nature of 
160 



FIEST STEP— PEOPITIATION. 

the Atonement," 90.) This idea of satisfaction 
is partially founded in the self -consciousness of 
the age that may at the moment be interrogated. 
Dinsmore has called attention to the different 
standards which different ages have erected. He 
says: "In the time of chivalry God's personal 
honor was shown to be appeased by either the 
plenary or adequate suffering of Christ; in the 
days of juster government the majesty of law was 
declared to be vindicated; interpreted in its 
priestly aspect, Christ's work was a full confes- 
sion and repentance of man's sinfulness. To the 
modern Christian, trained to think of God as a 
Father, satisfaction comes through the expression 
and activity of his compassion." (Op. cit. 237.) 
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which would 
be better entitled the Parable of the Heavenly 
Father, is usually regarded as the best epitome 
in revelation of the relation between God and his 
children. However, satisfactionist writers have 
felt that it is an imperfect statement in essential 
particulars, and think that it must be interpreted 
by the aid of a sort of interlinear addition. J. G. 
Simpson in Hastings's "Dictionary of Christ and 
the Gospels" says: "It is obvious that even the 
Parable of the Prodigal Son would not ring true 
to human ears unless it was forever interpreted 
by a transaction which gives due weight to the 
enormity of sin that entailed the sacrifice of the 
Father's only Son." We feel that the sin which 
it does portray is unprovoked, has no rational 
basis, is enacted against the thoughtful provisions 
161 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of wisdom and love. It is hard to see what could 
be added to the picture that would increase the 
enormity of the principle of sin there portrayed. 
But the writer above quoted and others would in- 
troduce something into the story that would be- 
come a condition of sin's forgiveness — a sacrifice, 
a bloodshedding, etc., something that would make 
it possible for the father to forgive the son.* This 
seems to us a violent and unsupported method of 
reading Scripture. There is no hint anywhere in 
the parable that such a thing is necessary. There 
is no place at which such an element can be at- 
tached. Such an interpretation would have to 
be read into the story and is an element absolutely 
foreign to its teachings. 

Without such a violence we can imagine the 
story enlarged to give a more complete descrip- 
tion of the mission and sacrifice of the Christ. 

The picture would be a more complete parallel 
to our social condition if there were a number of 
sons with the Prodigal at the stage of his desti- 
tution and want. Then the Father entrusts the 
Elder son to go to them with an invitation to re- 
turn to his fellowship and home. When he ar- 
rives where his brothers are he is not recognized 

* " It pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the idea that 
it was his nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping 
him out of them; that he did not do it out of compliment to 
Christ, or to a law, or to a plan of salvation, but from the full- 
ness of his great heart ; that he was a being not made (vindictive) 
by sin, but sorry; that he was not furious with wrath toward the 
sinner, but pitied him. . . . And when I found that Jesus Christ 
had such a disposition ... I felt I had found a God. ' ' (Henry 
Ward Beecher.) 

lo2 ^ 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

and makes his appeal to them. They are listless, 
indifferent, antagonistic, and on the defensive 
when he calls attention to their conduct and their 
destitution. He will not be rebuffed, but presses 
the father's claim upon them until they are exas- 
perated, and finally rise up and slay him. Then, 
when he is dead, they examine his body and find in 
his pocket his commission, and discover that they 
have slain their own brother. Then the sacrifice 
which he and their father have made makes its 
appeal to them, and they give up their rebellion 
and return home. The death of the brother has 
accomplished what his life was not able to do. 

If the parable should be thus supplemented 
by implicated elements, it will be noticed that the 
brother's death is not something which makes the 
father's forgiveness easier, but, on the contrary, 
makes it more difficult, from the father's point of 
view. The brothers have but enormously added 
to the sins which separated them before by this 
fratricidal sin, which is the greatest of all. The 
death of Jesus on the cross as interpreted by 
Peter on the day of Pentecost was not the ground 
by which his murderers were justified in their sins 
or for their sins or from their sins; it was the 
crowning exhibition of their sin. Peter rises to 
the heights of moral courage when he to the face 
of the murderers accuses them of this terrible 
wickedness of having crucified by the hands of 
lawless men him whom God had so unmistakably 
approved "by works and wonders and signs." 
He rises to the heights of boldness of announce- 
163 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ment of grace, when, notwithstanding this wicked- 
ness which could not be exceeded, he offers them 
pardon through Jesus, whom they have thus slain. 
We discover in this not a sacrifice to appease the 
wrath of God; we can see nothing set up as a 
condition of pardon save such a change of mind 
toward Jesus as would make them possible re- 
cipients of the pardon which it was in the heart 
of the Father to give to them. 

If it should seem to any one that this enlarge- 
ment of the parable does in any particular wrest 
it from its teaching, we will not urge the point, 
but will turn to a parable which seems to us to 
have in its point the mission of Jesus more liter- 
ally outlined than any other one Biblical picture. 
It is true that it does not deal with the question of 
pardon. If that point shall be raised by any one 
to indicate that there is no pardon for those who 
thus did oppose and those who now oppose Jesus 
in his mission, we shall hardly feel it worth our 
while to make answer to one who is so far re- 
moved from the evangelical point of view. That 
there is no pardon without repentance, we not 
only believe, but emphasize as against those who 
seem to us to provide for escape from the conse- 
quences of sin without moral condition. 

In Luke 20 : 9-15 we read : 

A man planted a vineyard, and let it out to 
husbandmen, and went into another country for 
a long time. And at the season he sent unto the 
husbandmen a servant, that they should give him 
of the fruit of the vineyard; but the husbandmen 
164 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

beat him and sent him away empty. And he sent 
yet another servant : and him also they beat, and 
handled him shamefully, and sent him away 
empty. And he sent yet a third: and him also 
they wounded and cast him forth. And the lord 
of the vineyard said, What shall I do ? I will send 
my beloved son; it may be they will reverence 
him. But when the husbandmen saw him, they 
reasoned one with another, saying, This is the 
heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance may be 
ours. And they cast him forth out of the vine- 
yard and killed him. 

The parable then diverges to the question of 
the fate of the nation, the Jews, which has thus 
acted. The interpretation that the nation has 
thus arrived at the end of its probation, and was 
consequently destroyed without remedy, we un- 
hesitatingly accept. But we do not from this 
conclude that individuals that have been impli- 
cated in this dreadful crime are also under the 
eternal and unchangeable ban. 

The parable as it stands is Jesus' philosophy 
of the history of the Jews, since the time that they 
were chosen as God's peculiar instrument for his- 
torical purposes, and it ends with the announced 
abandonment of them for that purpose. But in- 
cidentally Jesus weaves in the part which he was 
enacting in the plan of the Father. There is no 
intimation that his death was a necessity imposed 
by the will of the Father even in the remotest 
relation. His death as here portrayed was the 
result simply and solely of the wickedness of men, 
a culminating wickedness, added to the disregard 
165 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of every right which God had in his people. This 
wickedness was an absolute climax ; no other more 
terrible element could be added to accentuate it. 

The parable does not contain all or nearly all 
of the elements contained in the life and mission 
of Christ; but it does set in a clear and unmis- 
takable light the cause of the death of Jesus. If 
we should inquire what is implied in the ' ' fruit of 
the vineyard" which the servants and the son 
sought, we would be able to uncover the benevo- 
lent purposes of God in relation to his people; 
we would see that that ''fruit" was not something 
which God sought for his own selfish enjoyment 
and benefit, but that he sought the fruit of hu- 
manity in humanity's perfecting and glory as the 
only glory which could come to himself through 
his children. "God loved the world" is the final 
reason for sending prophet and Son to gather 
its fruit ; and Son and prophet came to his people 
on the same mission and for the same end. He is 
still sending his sons to humanity for the same 
great historic reason. 

In favor of the view that an objective basis 
of satisfaction was wrought in the atonement is 
urged the fact that only the Son of God could 
have wrought it. Thus Forsyth argues : ' ' If the 
effect of Christ on us be but our reconciliation, 
if the benefits be construed but in that subjective 
sense, if they do not extend to redemption from 
something more objective than our own froward- 
ness with God, that is an effect that might have 
been produced by a prophet and martyr of un- 
166 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

paralleled sanctity and unquenchable love." 
(" Person and Place of Jesus," 279.) 

It is readily admitted that only God could sat- 
isfactorily represent the attitude of God toward 
reconciliation of man and God. But the apparent 
effort in the above words to show that some dif- 
ferent kind of a work was undertaken by the Son 
than could have been undertaken by martyr or 
prophet, finds no endorsement in that parable of 
Jesus, where he represents one servant after an- 
other going to receive the fruits of the vineyard, 
and finally the Son undertakes the same mission, 
and was just as unsuccessful as they. 

Representative Satisfaction. 

We are frequently presented with a view of 
atonement which may be called satisfaction 
through a representative. Lidgett says : ' ' Christ 
is so related to God, and also to mankind, that 
what he does God does, and equally what he does 
man does." (" Fatherhood of God," 383.) With 
the first of these affirmations we are in entire ac- 
cord. It is a very important truth in resisting the 
idea that the Father may have a different demand 
concerning satisfaction for sin from that which 
Christ may have. We speak of this elsewhere. 
But the second affirmation, often put forth as en- 
lightening, we frankly confess ourselves as un- 
able to see. It is professedly a mystical relation. 
We believe it involves a confusion between an im- 
pression upon the race as an organism and the 
effect upon moral individual persons. The or- 
167 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ganism of mankind viewed as an entirety is not 
a morally responsible agent and is incapable of 
moral impression. It makes no choice, commits 
no transgressions, and is entirely subject to in- 
fluences over which, as a single unit, it has no 
moral or other control. Through a social law 
binding the individuals together which compose 
it, the sin of an individual may spread until the 
whole race is affected; but this does not occur 
by a decision of the organism as such. It occurs, 
so far as it is of moral quality, by the individual 
decisions of the members of the race. To the 
members of the race as individuals comes the 
condemnation for the sins thus committed, but to 
the race as a unit there is no moral condemnation. 
Hence there is no necessity for a race atonement, 
if we are to think of atonement as related to sin 
and not to physical condition or disease. 

Jesus is the Head of the race, — a truth which 
we delight to insist upon. But if we regard him 
as the physical Head, related to the whole organ- 
ism by the creative power of God, and not as the 
moral Head, in which sense he is related only 
to individuals as such by moral bonds, then we 
can discover no demands whatever for atone- 
ment. If the race organism is diseased, there 
may come by divine fiat a physical restitution to 
health, or there may come to it through individu- 
als an uplifted moral life by divine aid, which in 
its time shall work a renewed physical condition. 
But there is no such thing possible as a race atone- 
ment viewed as a moral renewal. In other words, 
168 



FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 

sin is a connotation of individual persons as such ; 
it is not an act that may be performed by an or- 
ganism called a race. And atonement, as we are 
studying it, is a provision for sin, and not for 
a physical or non-moral condition. The race as 
a race never acts morally; it can never be the 
recipient of a moral benefit. 

Guilt is a personal and individual matter, or 
it has no meaning. Consequences of sin may be 
organic and social. Hence the vicarious principle 
is universal; but moral substitution is impossible. 

Christ is the representative of humanity in 
the sense that he shows the normal individual 
man; he is representative as an ideal for the in- 
dividual to imitate ; he is representative in show- 
ing the possibilities of human nature in per- 
sonality. But this in no moral sense brings 
humanity before God to be treated en masse. 
Whenever we enter into moral relationship with 
God we enter as individual persons, acknowledg- 
ing, we must admit, the power of moral influence 
from others, but not in such a sense as to destroy 
responsibility and moral accountability. Jesus 
is our personal and individual Redeemer — the Re- 
deemer of us all, if we will; but he is never the 
Redeemer of the race en bloc, and all questions 
which relate us to him as an organism are outside 
the problem of atonement. Christ as represent- 
ative with the Father affords no light on the 
question of atonement, except as he is our repre- 
sentative as individual persons. There is not and 
can not be Representative Satisfaction. 
169 



Chapter VI. 

SUBSTITUTION. 

The first broad doctrinal aspect of atonement in 
the history of Christianity was that the death of 
Christ was a ransom price paid to Satan, in whose 
possession man was supposed to be, for his re- 
lease from bondage. This phase of the doctrine 
played a great role for a thousand years. It is 
not now necessary to make any argument against 
it, as it has been set aside as without any founda- 
tion worthy of consideration. 

The next broad phase of the doctrine was that 
the death of Christ is a substitute for the de- 
served death of man; that Christ took man's 
place in punishment, and that through this substi- 
tution man is released from the curse of the law. 
This has been presented with many modifications, 
and in its various forms may be said to remain 
until our day as the prevailing doctrine. In its 
bald form it has generally been set aside as inde- 
fensible from the facts of life. The arguments 
that have been made against different implica- 
tions have been sufficient, if brought together, to 
destroy its entire foundation. Nevertheless it is 
assumed as correct in principle, and different 
writers have sought to find some modified form 
170 



SUBSTITUTION. 

of it in which it would be acceptable to the Chris- 
tian consciousness of the world.* 

We desire to repudiate it altogether as a prin- 
ciple. We would distinguish the Vicarious prin- 
ciple from the Substitutionary, affirming the first 
and discarding the second. We believe that Christ 

*It will be a convenience to our readers to have a concise view 
of the phases through which the doctrine of the atonement has 
passed in Christian history. The following is from Clarke's 
"Outline of Christian Theology," p. 319 fg. : 

' ' The earliest definite theory on the subject was that Christ 
delivered men from sin by offering a ransom in their behalf to 
Satan, who was their rightful or actual lord. This doctrine took 
various forms, but this more than any other was the current and 
orthodox doctrine in the Church for nearly a thousand years. 

"Anselm, in the eleventh century, introduced the worthier 
idea that the ransom or satisfaction was paid by Christ not to 
Satan, but to God. He argued that the enormity of sin required 
an infinite satisfaction to God if he was to release the sinner; 
that this satisfaction was due to God from man, and could be 
justly offered by no other; that nevertheless it could be actually 
offered by no one inferior to God himself; and that for this reason 
God became man, in infinite mercy, in order to enable humanity, 
in the person of Christ, to satisfy him for its sins. This ex- 
planation proceeds from the analogies of civil law, and views the 
satisfaction due to God as a debt. 

' ' At the Eef ormation this doctrine was modified by the in- 
troduction of the analogies of criminal law. In this view, the 
satisfaction that was due to God consisted in punishment. It 
was now held that Christ actually took the place of sinners in 
the sight of God, and as their substitute suffered the punishment 
that was due to them, including, as many of the Eeformers taught, 
the sufferings of hell. Upon him fell all the punishment of all 
the sins of all the men for whom he died; against them, therefore, 
penal justice could have no further claim. 

' ' By way of improvement upon the theory of penal substitu- 
tion, which seemed to leave no room for genuine forgiving (since 
what is punished is not pardoned), came the Governmental theory: 
which held that Christ was not actually punished for the sins of 
men, but that he endured suffering that God, as a righteous ruler, 
could accept as a substitute for punishment. The sufferings of 
Christ thus sufficiently vindicated the honor of God's law and 
government, and forgiveness was made consistent with the main- 
tenance of his righteous order." 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

died on behalf of men ; his death is implicated by 
his mission in the social bonds of life; but that 
there is any judicial transfer to him of the guilt 
or the punishment of sin from the head of the 
sinner we denounce as irrational and immoral 
and un-Christian. 

"We hold to the non-transferability of punish- 
ment as a moral experience. It is true that the 
physical pains attached to a crime by statute law 
may be suffered by one who did not commit the 
crime and may not be suffered by the one who 
did. But this transfer is only an accident of our 
double nature — the moral and physical. The 
physical pain of a statutory penalty may be trans- 
ferred from one person to another; but this 
leaves unchanged the moral compensations, or 
self -judgments of sin. They remain unchanged, 
unchangeable. These statutory physical penalties 
pertain to human government, but not to divine. 
God has linked sin and its moral deserts together 
so that they can not be transferred. The soul 
that sinneth, it shall die. If this meant physical 
death, some one might die in the place of the 
sinner; but when it means moral death, and the 
physical death is only a mirrored accompaniment 
of the moral, there is only one way that a person 
can die, and that is by becoming a sinner. Thus 
a substituted physical death would not save the 
sinner from the death that was his due. There 
is and can be no moral substitution. All that is 
said about Jesus becoming sin for us can refer 
only by a figure of speech to the social and vica- 
172 



SUBSTITUTION. 

rious and sympathetic suffering on our behalf, 
involved by the power of his love in his becoming 
a real member of the human race, where no one 
can live unto himself, and no one with the heart 
of a savior can help but throw his life into the 
problem of rescuing his brethren. 

The Substitution theory of atonement can not 
command our assent on the ground of its an- 
tiquity or catholicity. From the standpoint of 
primary position and long continuance the "ran- 
som" theory would hold the ground against any 
other. But no one now hesitates on that ground 
to reject the latter as utterly untrustworthy and 
irrational. Following it, for five centuries the- 
ologians represented the death of Christ as an 
act of homage to the personal dignity and majesty 
of Grod ; this in turn gave way to the view that it 
was rendered to the majesty of the moral order 
of the world. The Church has 'failed to reach 
unanimity through its controversy over the ques- 
tions whether Christ died for the elect only or 
for all men, and whether it was available for sin- 
ners in some other part of the universe to us 
unknown, and also as to whether it is in itself 
an adequate satisfaction for sin, or whether it 
is only an accepted satisfaction by the Father. 
(Cf. Dale, "Atonement," 296-7.) 

The oldest theories have been unhesitatingly 
and thoroughly repudiated; no recent ones have 
been granted catholic assent; hence we hold that 
there should be perfect freedom in the effort to 
discover and state any position that will make 
173 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

its appeal to the Christian consciousness of the 
world.* 

If we shall seek even farther back than the 
early teachings of the Christian Church and in- 
quire what light falls upon atonement from the 
Jewish Church, we shall find that the Jews came 
to their final doctrine after discarding different 
views, some of them doubtless borrowed from 
even more primitive views as held by the people 
round about them. "Among those elements in 
the idea of atonement which faded out of Israel 's 



* There are passages in the early Christian writers which may 
easily be pressed into the service of the substitutionary theory, 
if one attends merely to their verbal suggestion. Nevertheless, 
it is extremely doubtful whether these writers had any such doc- 
trinal formula in their mind. If allowed to stand as an expres- 
sion of the devotional spirit, as undoubtedly their authors in- 
tended, they are the precious inheritance of all Christians; but 
when pressed into the service of a doctrine, which has been elab- 
orated since their day, many will turn from them as an inadequate 
interpretation of the Divine Mind. As illustrative of this class 
of literature, and also for its inherent power and beauty, we here 
reproduce a passage from an anonymous writer of the second 
century in an epistle to Diognetus, the instructor of Marcus 
Aurelius: "But when our wickedness had reached its height, 
and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and 
death was impending over us; and when the time had come which 
God had before appointed for manifesting his own kindness and 
power, how the love of God through exceeding regard for men 
did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember 
our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering and bore 
with us, he himself took on him the burden of our iniquities, 
he gave his own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy One for 
transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous 
One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, 
the immortal One for them that are mortal. . . . O sweet 
exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all 
expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a 
single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should 
justify many transgressors!" (" Ante-Nicene Fathers," I, 28.) 

174 



SUBSTITUTION. 

consciousness, two were of special significance 
and importance. The first is the view of the sac- 
rifice or offering as a compensation to Jehovah 
for an offense against his majesty and holiness. 
This was the prevailing teaching in the earliest 
times, but it changed its significance as the con- 
ception grew more and more ethical and spiritual 
and the gift came to be looked upon finally as 
only the outward manifestation of an inward and 
spiritual grace. Closely allied with this view was 
the second, which saw in the animal sacrificed a 
substitute for the man who was deserving of 
death. This substitutionary theory of the atone- 
ment appears clearly in the old custom recorded 
in Deut. 21: 1-9 and in the explanation of Israel's 
sufferings furnished by Isaiah, chapter 53, and 
probably lies behind many of the older usages. 
But it is wholly without influence upon the later 
legislation regarding atonement and is incom- 
patible with the individual's responsibility for 
his own sins which is insisted upon by Ezekiel 
and his successors." (Smith and Burton, "Bib- 
lical Ideas of Atonement," 248, 249.) 

According to Heb. 9 : 7 the high priest on the 
great day of atonement presented an offering for 
the "ignorances of the people," that is for those 
sins which the people had committed unwittingly. 
Some have thought that this was the only pro- 
vision made for atonement. But atonement was 
prescribed for other sins in Lev. 5 : 1-6 ; 6 : 1-7, 
where after restitution has been made ceremonial 
atonement is made by the priest for the inner 
175 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

sin of purpose or intention. That is, there must 
first be material restitution, and then ceremonial 
cleansing for the spiritual misdeed. "The final 
teaching of the priests was that atonement was 
to be obtained through absolute obedience to the 
divine will. The complete expression of that will 
is found in the requirements of the Mosaic law. 
The faithful and exact performance of all these 
requirements assures the nation and the individ- 
ual of the permanent possession of the divine 
favor. Implied in all the later teaching regarding 
atonement was the belief that the atoning act or 
series of acts was primarily indicative of a 
change of attitude on the part of the one making 
atonement. This change is prerequisite to the 
bestowal of pardon." (Smith & Burton: Op. cit. 
250-1.) 

The drift of the ideas in the Jewish teaching 
was from atonement in material form to spiritual 
form ; from the outward and visible to the inward 
and unseen ; from a view which required the pla- 
cating of divine wrath by gifts to one which re- 
garded God as merciful, and reconciliation is 
sought through a changed attitude of man. At 
first atonement was in bringing presents unto 
God, an idea that ruled among ethnic religions 
to placate the wrath or to purchase the favor of 
deity. In the development of this element of 
atonement, elaborate ritual and offerings were 
used. God was the one whose wrath must be 
appeased. But the prophets rejected these 
grosser ideas and taught that not "burnt-offer- 
176 



SUBSTITUTION. 

nigs" but penitent and contrite hearts were 
pleasing unto Jehovah. He will maintain fellow- 
ship only with those who are obedient, and not 
with those who practice elaborate ritual, but 
whose hearts are far from him. 

It can hardly be doubted that in the practice 
of substitution as found among the Jews we have 
to do with elements which came to them from 
heathen sources or influences. We have the tes- 
timony of Shelomoh ben Addereth to the effect 
that the Kapparah (atonement) was a non-Jewish 
and heretical custom, an exotic growth trans- 
planted from some pagan faith. Briefly de- 
scribed, it is as follows: It takes place in the 
homes of the Jews and is essentially a private 
ceremony. Its purpose will appear in its descrip- 
tion. Fowls are selected — male birds for men, 
and hens for women. White ones are preferred 
out of deference to the Bible text which says, 
"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be- 
come as white as snow." The liturgy is a few 
Biblical passages, mostly from the Psalms; the 
last verse is Job 33 : 23 : "If there be with him an 
angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to 
show unto man what is right for him; then God 
is gracious unto him and saith, Deliver him from 
going down to the pit, I have found a ransom." 
Then the bird is swung three times around the 
head, while the offerer repeats the formula : l ' This 
is my substitute, my commutation, and my atone- 
ment; this fowl goes to death that I may be gath- 
ered into a long life and a happy one, and finally 
177 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

enter into peace." Then four deaths are theat- 
rically inflicted on the victim : strangling, stoning, 
beheading, and burning. The strangling is rep- 
resented by half-throttling it; the stoning, by 
throwing it to the ground; the beheading, by cut- 
ting the bird's throat; and the burning, by cook- 
ing it for the evening meal. At one time the birds 
were given over to the poor, but this caused ob- 
jection on the ground of the superstition that to 
the bird had been transferred the sin of the 
offerer. 

That such customs as these, unauthorized 
from any source which we could designate as in- 
spired, have had their impression on the sources 
of our teaching can hardly be ignored. What 
means have we of eliminating them? If we 
should find them in evident contradiction to fun- 
damental moral principles governing the release 
from sin, that would be a ground of suspicion 
against them. If they are in evident contra- 
diction to the testimony of moral convictions 
which have grown up in us as the result of Chris- 
tian principles, we can not help but feel that they 
are under indictment. Such a principle is the 
one, as we think, of the transfer of the guilt from 
a sinful to an innocent being; or the transfer of 
guilt from a moral being to a non-moral being, 
as from a man to an animal. If we know any- 
thing as the result of Christian nurture and teach- 
ing, we know that guilt is personal and non r 
transferable; we know that guilt can have no 
meaning to any but in relation to a moral being. 
178 



SUBSTITUTION. 

Hence all such notions as the transfer of sin in 
any real sense from a man to a goat or a chicken 
must be rejected. If any teaching related to it 
or growing out of it is professedly an interpreta- 
tion of Scripture, then we must make a choice: 
give up our comprehension of all other moral 
truths or reject this interpretation. Both can 
not be true. God can not be the author of con- 
tradictions. These two views can not be brought 
into harmony by the human mind, to which they 
professedly appeal. 

That vestiges of such outgrown views should 
remain in New Testament times is nothing more 
than one would expect. A mere religious fact of 
that time is not a sufficient foundation for a Chris- 
tian doctrine. We must inquire carefully whether 
it is consonant with the more spiritual views that 
were brought in by Jesus Christ. The Pharisaic 
doctrine of atonement doubtless contained much 
of substitutionary legalism. We are authorized 
by the drift of prophetic late teaching and the 
clearer moral views of Jesus to carefully search 
out for elimination this old leaven of error. The 
prophets as well as Jesus called upon the sinner 
to turn from his sin and its consequent death, not 
intimating even remotely that any sacrifice to 
justice must first be made as a foundation on 
which repentance and hope might be based. 
(Ezek. 33:11.) 

John the Baptist may perhaps furnish the 
culmination of this Old Testament development 
of the doctrine. He preached an impending ca- 
179 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

lamity, a divine judgment; but he does not have 
a word to say concerning sacrifice or substitu- 
tional offering. He makes no reference to an 
altar or a temple service. He preaches expressly 
that there is a method of escape from the im- 
pending divine judgment, which he characterizes 
as an ax laid at the root of the tree, and an un- 
quenchable fire; but each one is to escape by his 
own individual repentance and manifestation of 
righteousness. The baptism which he prescribes 
is nothing more than a manifestation of accept- 
ance of the doctrine announced and the repent- 
ance enjoined. 

What caused the death of Jesus, God or man? 

On the face of it Christ died at the hands of 
wicked men and because of their hate. It was 
their will that he should die. His purity of life, 
his penetrating teaching angered them to the 
point of murder. Obviously, then, if Jesus died 
by the appointment and special will of God, and 
accomplished in his death a substituted penalty 
for man, it is necessary that that shall be made 
clear by special and unambiguous proof. Prima 
facie, it is denied by the apparent facts. 

We concede in advance that every life is a plan 
of God and that there was a general sense in 
which the Father had planned the life and death 
of his Son, and that all of this accomplished a 
divine purpose. Such a concession, however, does 
not carry with it the idea that the death of Christ 
was the result of a necessity imposed upon him 
180 



SUBSTITUTION. 

by the Father specifically, and that that was the 
only significance of his death. That the Father 
would accomplish through his death the reconcili- 
ation of man by the display of his love is also 
readily granted. But this is accomplished by the 
workings of usual and universal principles of 
moral influence that operate in the lives and suf- 
ferings of all men. This does not single out his 
death alone as accomplishing these desired re- 
sults. These concessions do not make God the 
Father the author of the death of Jesus in the 
ordinary sense in which we use language. There 
is a sense in which God's will encompasses all 
events, actively or permissively ; but that sense 
does not destroy the ordinary responsibility in 
man for human action. That the Father would 
influence men through the death of Jesus we doubt 
not at all. Our question would penetrate the ul- 
timate causes for that death. Was it a necessity 
imposed by God; or a necessity imposed by the 
wickedness and hate of men? If it was the for- 
mer, it must be specifically shown ; for on the face 
of it, it was the latter. 

There may be violent revolt against God by 
independent minds which dare to think and apply 
to him the usual ethical standards when Chris- 
tianity is represented as teaching that Jesus, the 
innocent, undeserving of any infliction of pain by 
another, died by the requirement of the Father, 
to make atonement for sins for which he had 
no responsibility. That brilliant Scandinavian 
writer, Ellen Key, says: "I recollect my own 
181 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

fierce hate against God, when I, at the age of 
six years, heard of the death of Jesus being 
caused by God's demand for an atonement." 
("Century of the Child," 298.) Surely a Chris- 
tian doctrine which produces such an impression 
on the mind of an unspoiled child must present 
overwhelming grounds for our credence. 

The thought of Jesus as to the reason and ne- 
cessity for his death is nowhere better stated, per- 
haps, than in John 10 : 11 : "I am the good shep- 
herd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for 
his sheep." Reflection upon the situation here 
portrayed gives us not the faintest suggestion 
of a substituted legal death. The good shepherd 
lays down his life, in one aspect, from ceaseless 
watching and thoughtfulness for the sheep. He 
may lose his life in some perilous attempt at 
rescue of a strayed or unfortunate sheep that has 
fallen into a chasm or over a precipice. The same 
ministry is pictured in Matt. 19 : 12, where the 
shepherd leaves the ninety and nine safe in the 
fold and goes after the "little one" that has 
strayed or has been duped into error by some one 
who "caused it to stumble." In case of attack 
the shepherd lays down his life in defending the 
sheep from robbers or wolves that would break 
into the fold and destroy or carry them off. 

This is a real ministry made necessary by the 
actual incidents of life as we know them. It is 
nothing imposed by an attitude of a heavenly 
Father, knowledge of which is altogether hidden 
from us, and seems to have been invented in the 
182 



SUBSTITUTION. 

stress of a theory by those who have failed to 
comprehend the great fact that pulsates in the 
heart of all history. Such a view of the death 
of Christ rises mountain-high above that view 
which contemplates it as a mere court procedure, 
which might have been omitted entirely if the 
great Judge had so chosen, making it a mere 
acceptilatio ; it might have been omitted if the 
great Lawgiver and Governor had not feared that 
his government would collapse without it. This 
ministration could not be dispensed with by a 
mere fiat. To omit it was to omit the salvation 
of men ; to have allowed a great world its course 
in perdition without an effort to rescue it. This 
is the atonement that is vital, indispensable, re- 
vealing no implacable anger, revealing only a 
heart of invincible love. 

If the death of Christ by wicked hands was 
not the direct and unconditional determination 
of the Father, why was it necessary for our new 
relations with God which we call redemption? 
"The necessity for this seemed to him (Paul) ax- 
iomatic. Conceiving of God as not only loving 
and gracious, but as holy, and in his very nature 
opposed to sin, it seemed to him a self-evident 
condition of forgiveness that the death which ex- 
pressed the Divine judgment upon its evil should 
be borne in a spirit of obedience to the Divine 
will, and that God's holiness should be thereby 
manifested in the very event that revealed his 
love." (Somerville, "St. Paul's Conception of 
Christ," 88.) 

183 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

The above statement seems to us more satis- 
factory than the other one, often made, that God 's 
condemnation of sin is revealed in the death of 
Christ. The latter could be true if it were pos- 
sible for Christ to occupy our place in guilt. Then 
the Father could visit the punishment of sin upon 
him who by some arrangement had become guilty 
of sin. But this latter situation is inconceivable. 
Jesus was not guilty of sin; guilt could not be 
transferred to him by any known moral law. No 
one has ever been able to show the possibility of 
this transfer, although many have accepted it as 
a truth. But the non-transf erability of guilt from 
a sinner to a righteous man is a fundamental 
principle of the moral universe. This principle 
destroyed, and all would be in moral confusion; 
nothing would be left of the culpability of guilt 
and the ill-deserts of sin. All moral distinctions 
would go with the moral chaos which such a loss 
would involve. This being so, we can see no moral 
connection between Christ's sufferings and the 
indignation of God towards sin. Social laws may 
involve the suffering of the innocent with the 
guilty or for the guilty; but no known law can 
dissolve the relation of the sinner and his guilt. 

It is common for writers on this subject to 
say: Christ's death was not a penalty for sins; it 
was a substitute for penalty. We confess our- 
selves too slow of thought to be able to see the 
distinction which these words seek to convey. 
They have been used when the idea of Christ's 
suffering the exact penalty for the sins of the 
184 



SUBSTITUTION. 

world, or suffering any penalty for sins which 
he did not commit, became untenable, because the 
thought was repudiated by the moral sense of 
mankind. 

But now what is expressed when the words 
"substitute for penalty" are used instead of 
"penalty?" If it is meant that Christ's suffer- 
ings were something different from the exact 
penalty which justice demanded, different either 
in kind or degree, we can easily comprehend the 
intended meaning. But when it is said that it was 
not a penalty at all, but the allowance is still made 
that the law demanded a punishment for sins be- 
fore they can be forgiven, and that Christ's suf- 
ferings took the place of these necessitated suffer- 
ings, and became a substitute for the penalty, 
we can not see how the sense would be any dif- 
ferent if we held to the old phrase, "penalty for 
sin." It seems more like an attempt to escape 
logical and moral responsibility by a change of 
words than any real alleviation of the situation 
from its objectionable features. If the point is 
allowed that his death was not the result of a 
legal demand, then the whole contention about 
substitution is given up, and his death may then 
be examined in its living and actual relations. 
But if it was a demand of law, the distinction be- 
tween being a penalty and a substitute for penalty 
is verbal, and not real. 

That the righteousness of God demanded the 
death of Jesus as a substitute for the death of 
man is a very general contention. It is claimed 
185 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

that God must either endure the penalty of sin 
as a substitute for man or inflict it literally upon 
man. As a manifestation of righteousness, en- 
during the penalty is equally effective with in- 
flicting it. 

In regard to this contention the question of 
fact must first be raised, Did Christ endure the 
penalties of my sins? That he endured pain re- 
sulting from my sin is conceded ; but it is not true 
that a forgiven man is relieved from the penalties 
of his sin. Christ suffered that I might not sin; 
but his suffering does not destroy the pain of my 
sin; so far as a mental or moral effect is con- 
cerned, his suffering should add to the poignancy 
and bitterness of my grief on account of sin. 

The righteousness of God may be either the 
righteousness of his own nature or the righteous- 
ness of his government. The first is not affected 
by the Cross ; he was just as righteous before as 
after. It is, however, a wonderful revelation of 
the wickedness of sin. As to the righteousness 
of his government, that is abundantly shown by 
this death-costing effort to secure the righteous- 
ness of his subjects. Whatever means will do 
that will reveal and make good that righteousness. 
In securing the repentance of the sinner and his 
acceptance of a new nature, this seems best se- 
cured. That repentance is secured, we dare be- 
lieve, by the rigidity of his laws and the display 
of his love. These are both shown, not through 
Jesus' death as a sacrifice to justice, but through 
nature's firmness in punishing sin, unaffected by 
186 



SUBSTITUTION. 

the atonement, and the display of Jesus on the 
cross, as a revelation of that love. 

The righteousness of God is shown by his con- 
cern for it in the world. If his moral relations to 
the world secure righteousness in the world, then 
his own righteousness is vindicated. It then re- 
mains to determine what is the best means to 
secure that righteousness. Does the placing him- 
self in the sinner's place best secure righteous- 
ness? As a moral appeal, it seems to us that it 
does; as a concession to legal justice, we can not 
see that it has much force to the sinner. Unless 
demanded by the Nature of God for the satisfac- 
tion of his own feeling of justice, it does not seem 
to enact the part assigned to it by the substitution 
theory. 

"He bore our sins on the tree." "He was 
made sin for us. ' ' These are Scripture phrases ; 
but how shall they be understood? Those who 
accept the substitution doctrine say that they 
mean that Christ suffered in our stead; that our 
sins — some hold in the sense of guilt ; others, who 
shrink from that, hold in the sense of penalty — 
were transferred from us to him. Luther did not 
shrink from this position in its most literal and 
revolting form. In this commentary on Galatians 
he says: "And this (no doubt) all the prophets 
did foresee in spirit, that Christ did become the 
greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, rebel, 
thief, and blasphemer that ever was or could be 
in all the world. For he, being made a sacrifice 
for the sins of the world, is not now an innocent 
187 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

person and without sins, is not now the Son of 
God born of the Virgin Mary, but a sinner, which 
hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blas- 
phemer, an oppressor, and a persecutor; of Peter, 
which denied Christ; of David, which was an 
adulterer, a murderer, and caused the Gentiles to 
blaspheme the name of the Lord; and briefly, 
which hath and beareth the sins of all men in his 
body; not that he himself committeth them, but 
for that he received them being committed or done 
of us, and laid them upon his own body that he 
might make satisfaction for them with his blood. 
. . . Our most merciful Father . . . sent his 
only Son into the world, and laid upon him all 
the sins of all men, saying, Be thou Peter that 
denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and. 
cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sin- 
ner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that 
thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly, 
be thou the person which hath committed the sins 
of all men. ' ' 

It is hardly possible in our day to stand for 
such an interpretation when it is stated thus 
baldly with all its full implications. If he bore 
my sin instead of me in any sense, then in that 
sense my sin is not upon me. If I am a murderer, 
by this doctrine Christ becomes a murderer and 
I am such no longer. If I am a thief, by this 
doctrine he becomes a thief and I am such no 
longer. Is this true to the facts of life and con- 
sciousness in any sense whatever? The unrepent- 
ant murderer is not to any degree relieved from 
188 



SUBSTITUTION. 

the consciousness of his crime by the fact that 
Jesus died. Even those who have had Christian 
training and know the facts concerning his life 
and death are not in the slightest degree relieved 
of condemnation. If they meditate upon that 
death at all, more than likely it adds to their sense 
of sin rather than lightens it. If in heaven the 
guilt of the murderer has been transferred from 
the heart of the murderer to Jesus, there is no 
place on earth where the consciousness of that 
transaction has been recorded. 

Nor is the penalty transferred by any attitude 
of human judgment. Never have we heard of a 
Christian judge who, when a man has been proven 
guilty of murder, has said: Inasmuch as Jesus 
Christ has borne the penalty of this crime, this 
criminal may go free. If any one ever had sug- 
gested such a thing, Christian society would rise 
against him and impeach him, whether with or 
without sanction of law. Nor have we ever heard 
of a judge who said: Inasmuch as Jesus Christ 
died to bear the penalty of this crime, this man 
in righteousness ought to be freed, but as the 
principle has never been enacted into human law, 
I am compelled against my sense of justice to 
sentence him to death. It has never entered the 
head of any one to apply the substitutional theory 
of atonement in actual transference of the sin of 
the sinner from his own head to that of Jesus 
Christ, in the actual social and civic relations of 
life, and yet theologians have given such an ex- 
pression of the doctrine that if their words have 
189 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the ordinary meaning of language, justice re- 
quires such an application. Such a strong and 
helpful thinker as Garvie says : " In the cross the 
sin of mankind was forgiven because judged. It 
was God in Christ who both offered forgiveness 
and endured judgment; for God alone could do 
both." We wish for the moment to hold before 
us only the substitutionary features of this state- 
ment. There were two thieves crucified with 
Jesus. One of them became repentant, and was 
assured of salvation; the other remained obdu- 
rate, and there is no word on which to ground 
a belief that he was saved. Did not Jesus die 
for both! Yet it is evident that he did not die 
instead of both or instead of either, so far as his 
character as a thief was concerned. The follow- 
ing consequences are involved in the statement 
of Garvie: 

1. If sin was forgiven because judged, then 
all men are forgiven; for Christ died for all. 
Those who claim this objective atonement must 
feel considerable embarrassment when modern 
sentiment will not allow them to apply it without 
the subjective condition of repentance and faith. 
Nothing is surer than that such an application is 
now utterly repudiated. 

2. It is hard to see how punishment manifests 
the holiness of God unless it be visited upon the 
identical sinner. Sin can not be separated from 
the sinner as one would remove a garment, and 
punished as an abstraction; only persons can be 
punished. 

190 



SUBSTITUTION. 

3. It seems to us that God's holiness is pre- 
served when he provides for the cessation of sin 
and the experience of holy conduct. Pain does 
not of itself accomplish this, as we have been 
learning in our punitive institutions; but a new 
heart, a regenerated nature. 

4. Garvie affirms that "the holiness of God 
himself in his judgment on sin is expressed and 
exercised by inherent necessity in a moral order 
which conjoins sin and suffering." This we 
hasten to admit and also to add that there is no 
provision in atonement, so far as physical se- 
quence is concerned, to disjoin the sin and suffer- 
ing. The forgiven man still suffers. It is the 
inevitability of the conjunction of sin and suffer- 
ing which makes God's rule a moral order. 

5. The Epistle of John builds an argument 
for the holiness of God on the very point that God 
forgives and cleanses the sinner who confesses. 
Such a confession is God's great opportunity to 
end sin; for now the sinner joins with him in con- 
demning it. To make an end of sin, when such 
an opportunity presents, is in the highest degree 
a manifestation of the holiness of him who can 
and will thus do it. To make a righteous man 
out of a sinner is a far greater manifestation of 
holiness than any exhibition of vindictiveness to- 
ward a sinner can be. 

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the 
law, having become a curse for us ; for it is writ- 
ten, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. ' ' 
(Gal. 3:13.) 

191 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

''Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on 
onr behalf ; that we might become the righteous- 
ness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5: 21.) 

G. B. Stevens comments on these passages as 
follows: "A punishment of Christ instead of the 
guilty party would imply the literal transfer of 
the guilt of man to him; for punishment where 
there is no guilt would be injustice. But guilt is 
the inseparable consequence of the sin done, and 
can not attach to an innocent person. There can, 
then, be no punishment where there is no guilt, 
and there can be no guilt where there is no ill- 
desert. To predicate punishment of Christ's suf- 
ferings would mean either to predicate guilt of 
him, which would deny his sinlessness, or to affirm 
a transfer of others' guilt to him in such a sense 
that he became the object of God's wrath, which 
is contrary to the nature of guilt and confuses 
all moral distinctions regarding sin, guilt, and 
penalty. That Paul can not have intended to 
affirm that Christ was punished is a priori prob- 
able from the obvious implications of such a state- 
ment. His words have been thought to involve 
this view ; but if they had been so intended, they 
would surely have been made more explicit. 
There is no such statement as that Christ died 
instead of (anti) us; he is said to have died on 
behalf of our sins. If the statement that he be- 
came a 'curse for us' is urged as necessarily 
meaning that he came under a personal sense of 
God's displeasure — that is, was punished by lit- 
erally suffering the penal infliction of the curse 
192 



SUBSTITUTION. 

due to sin — it must then be said that the kindred 
phrase, 'God made him to be sin for us,' is to be 
as rigidly interpreted and can not mean less than 
that God made him a sinner — a meaning which is, 
however, excluded by the next phrase, 'who knew 
no sin.' " ("The Pauline Theology," 235 fg.) 

This conclusion to which Stevens comes seems 
to us sound. But we are bound to notice that it 
is a conclusion, possibly of Stevens, and may or 
may not be Paul 's. The crucial point in the exe- 
gesis is where Stevens enters some fundamental 
principles which are not from Paul, but are his 
own. The relation between guilt and a sinner, 
which becomes a determining matter in the final 
conclusion, is not enunciated by Paul, who for 
aught that appears may be confused in the mat- 
ter. But it is an ethical principle which Stevens 
holds to be fundamental, to be recognized by di- 
rect insight, and which is true, even if Paul may 
have entirely overlooked it. 

If we are to decide exegetical questions by the 
introduction of such fundamental principles, why 
is it not just as allowable to discuss the prin- 
ciples of the atonement in the first place by the 
light of these principles, without whose aid we 
could come to no satisfactory conclusions con- 
cerning what Paul has said? As a matter of fact 
those who did not introduce these fundamental 
ethical principles into their exegesis came to un- 
ethical conclusions which the principles them- 
selves on their own account are sufficient to over- 
throw. In other words, we seem to be following 
193 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the light of truth given us direct, whose illumina- 
tion has given us abundant confidence in our con- 
clusions. New light has been breaking forth since 
the days when the doctrine was taught of an un- 
ethical transfer of man's guilt to the head of the 
Savior of men. 

But if the exegete, refusing to consider the 
bearing of all ethical considerations, shall seek to 
end the argument by insisting that Paul taught 
this doctrine, ethical or unethical, it is only suffi- 
cient to remind him that exegesis never can end a 
discussion that has confessedly led to an unethical 
conclusion. If according to the testimony of the 
exegete Paul has taught for Christian doctrine 
that which is unethical, it is only established 
that Paul has taught that Jesus is not the Christ, 
and we must look for another. Such exegesis only 
undermines the authority of the apostle or other 
teacher the meaning of whose words is thus estab- 
lished. Such a process may only succeed in show- 
ing that Paul never became entirely free from 
the limitations of Rabbinical thought. The great 
question that confronts us in any progressive de- 
velopment of doctrine is, Shall we take John and 
Paul as an aid or a limitation in interpreting the 
thought of Jesus'? The wonderful sympathy of 
the mind of Paul with the mind of Jesus is in- 
dubitable; but did Paul or John exhaust the 
thought of Christ concerning his mission or his 
work? Any light or off-hand answer to this ques- 
tion is unworthy of record. An affirmative an- 
swer is rather discouraging to the devout stu- 
194 



SUBSTITUTION. 

dent, empties the progress of Christian doctrine 
of significance; yea, more, it denies the validity 
of Christian doctrine as such, and insists that 
there can only be Pauline doctrine. As devout a 
scholar as E. F. Horton says: "Not even John 
and Paul fully apprehended his (Jesus') thought, 
while all subsequent interpreters have been ham- 
pered by the supposed necessity of approaching 
his ideas only through the interpretation of these 
and other apostles." ("Teaching of Jesus," 
236.) 

The relation between the death of Jesus and 
the righteousness of God has been presented in 
the following form : Forgiveness of sin might in- 
dicate that God was indifferent to it. To allow 
a sinner the destiny of a righteous man might 
seem to say that God makes no distinction be- 
tween righteousness and unrighteousness. In 
order to prove that God does regard sin as a most 
serious thing, the Father has the Son manifest 
through death how great is his concern about it. 
This done, there is no danger that he will be 
thought indifferent to sin, and so he may now 
freely forgive the sinner. 

This is a plausible presentation. That it 
would in this form accomplish the desired result, 
we freely admit. We are inclined to turn away 
from it only because it seems a somewhat arti- 
ficial expedient. That God has no other means 
of showing his horror of sin hardly seems pos- 
sible. That is shown by the everlasting and un- 
195 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

changeable nexus between sin and suffering. 
Moreover, all that is stated above conies about 
in our view, but in a more natural way. The 
Cross manifests the suffering of God; to credit 
it to the working of sin in the human heart, and 
not to some "plan" to manifest divine righteous- 
ness, meets every necessity of the moral problem 
of the character of God. The view which we 
hold, that God is the abiding sufferer, not simply 
from the sins of that Friday of the crucifixion, 
but of the sins of our own lives and of the pres- 
ent day, sufficiently presents the antagonism 
which God must feel toward sin. No "plan" ex- 
pressly adopted for the purpose of manifesting 
righteousness can be half so forceful as the dis- 
covery that God has so made the world that when 
it is hurt by sin he himself is hurt, and that vi- 
tally. 

The most striking statement of this view that 
we have seen is by Prof. E. D. Burton, who says : 
"In his suffering on the cross we have a mani- 
festation more clear than anywhere else in the 
world of the true nature of sin and, at the same 
time, of the pain which sin continually inflicts on 
God. It is the fullest manifestation of human 
sin because here we see most clearly illustrated 
that spirit which would lead men, if only they 
had the power, to put God out of his own uni- 
verse ; it is the fullest manifestation of the divine 
pain at sin, because at no other point in human 
history does God so uncover to us his heart as 
it suffers under the stroke of human sin. 
196 



SUBSTITUTION. 

"The cross of Christ is in this view simply 
the emergence into the plane of human history, 
into the sight of human eyes, of the eternal divine 
tragedy. It is God's perpetual word to us that 
every sin of man smites him to the heart. The 
death of Christ is not the concentrated accumu- 
lation of the divine pain — it is the momentary 
laying bare to the gaze of men of that fact which 
is as old as sin, and will last while sin lasts, that 
the sin of man is a blow at God which he feels 
with all its force. Thus is Jesus ' death the mani- 
festation of the sensitiveness of God to sin, i. e., 
of his righteousness. " (" Biblical Ideas of Atone- 
ment," 176, note.) 

The righteousness of God is further shown 
in the manner in which the forgiveness is be- 
stowed. It is not bestowed upon sinners as such. 
It is bestowed upon sinners who renounce sin 
and through faith accept righteousness. Much 
mystery may at this point be attached to the word 
"faith." It seems to us that the simplest con- 
ception of it is, if not the best, at least quite suf- 
ficient to enable us to understand this transac- 
tion. Faith does not represent an attained right- 
eous character, but it does signify an acceptance 
of a righteous program as placed before us in 
obedience to Jesus Christ. By faith we accept 
him as our Master, our Lord. We put ourselves 
in the attitude of disciples, followers, loyal sub- 
jects. This attitude maintained will bring us to 
the full realization of a righteous character. If 
it should be put aside, all the provisions of for- 
197 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

giveness are withdrawn, and we are left as one 
over whom there was only a sentence suspended 
during good behavior. The rigor with which the 
administration of atonement is upheld in behalf 
of righteousness is of itself a complete vindica- 
tion of God against the suspicion that he is in- 
different regarding sin. None can benefit from 
his grace unless he maintain the relation of faith 
which binds him to the program of righteousness 
and to Jesus as Savior and Lord. 

The distinction between the vicarious prin- 
ciple and the substitutionary is well illustrated 
by a recent incident taken from life, so simple 
that none can fail to understand it. Billy Rugh, 
the newsboy, gave the skin on his leg to be grafted 
on to that of Miss Ethel Smith, who had been 
severely burned by the explosion of gasoline in 
a motor-cycle. It was the only thing that could 
save her life, and it was given with the full un- 
derstanding on his part that he must lose his 
leg, and perhaps his life. The shock of the am- 
putation of his leg was too great for his system, 
and he died. He expressed no regrets at the sac- 
rifice, however, and died saying, "Yes, I 'm going; 
but I was some good to the world after all." 

The transaction might be called a substitution- 
ary sacrifice, if Miss Smith had lived. Then it 
might be said, He died in her stead. But the gift 
of Billy Rugh's life was in vain. Miss Smith 
also died, in spite of the costly sacrifice that had 
been made to save her. Hence it was clearly a 
vicarious death that the little hero accomplished 
198 



SUBSTITUTION. 

— a death for Miss Smith, but not a substitute for 
her. He died in an effort to save her, but failed 
to do so.* 

If Jesus Christ's death had been substitution- 
ary, then all for whom he died must have been 
saved. To maintain that such is actually the fact 
makes it necessary either to affirm that all the 
race are actually saved — a supposition that is 
contrary to apparent fact — or we must affirm that 
he did not die for all, but only for a certain num- 
ber whom we may call the elect. From a certain 
point of view this latter assumption may arouse 
no criticism of Divine action, provided those for 
whom he died are designated. But it is mockery 
unworthy of an honorable man, to say nothing of 
the stainless Son of God, that certain persons 
should be publicly called to attain salvation, and 
the event should prove that there never was any 
provision for their salvation. No one is able be- 
fore the event of final salvation to identify the 
elect. If in assuming that certain persons are 
the elect, we do not give all others an adequate 
presentation and offer of the gospel, we may 
never be quite sure that it is not this lack of a 
fair chance that caused their perdition rather 
than any failure in the purpose of the Bedeemer. 
On the other hand, to hold that the elect are those 
who are actually responsive to the message of 
God's redeeming love is to make it quite possible 
that the response is the condition of their salva- 



* The statement concerning Miss Smith 's death is as reported 
at the time of writing, but is now contradicted. We leave it as 
illustrative of a result which was entirely possible. 

199 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

tion, rather than the election. The remaining 
possibility of assuming that the elect include some 
of those who are and always continue to be in- 
different to God's offer of salvation and remain 
to the last devoid of personal righteousness, is 
to destroy the moral foundation and meaning of 
salvation and to show God indifferent to moral 
character. 

The doctrine of election, then, as an explana- 
tion of Christ's substitutionary death is quite un- 
manageable. Those who hold to it must do so 
not to make atonement intelligently reasonable: 
for it flies in the face of reason. Having no ra- 
tional light to throw upon the case of those for 
whom Christ died, the burdens of the doctrine 
must be borne gratuitously. 

But the alternative of the doctrine of election 
leads us to adopt the opinion that Christ died 
for some, at least, who are not finally saved. It 
would be proper, then, to represent his death as 
an effort made in the interest of their salvation, 
which in his case, as in our illustration of Billy 
Rugh, failed. The death is not a legal transac- 
tion, which, being accomplished, a record of it 
made on the books of justice satisfying all the 
necessities of the case, and the condemned by 
virtue of it go free; it is rather a moral force, 
response to which is free, and when the response 
is made it is recorded not on books of justice, but 
on the living tablets of the heart. This is the 
definition of a vicarious rather than of a substi- 
tutionary death. 

200 



SUBSTITUTION. 

The following is given as an illustration of the 
atonement as viewed by those who think of it in 
a substitutionary form. John Brown's oldest son 
relates that by a system of demerits instituted by 
his father he had accumulated a debt of a num- 
ber of lashes for disobedience and other faults. 
One Sunday morning the father told the son to 
follow him to the tannery for the settlement of 
the account. After a long and tearful talk Brown 
the elder then administered one-third of the 
lashes from a prepared blue beech switch. And 
then, to the astonishment of the son, as told by 
himself, " father stripped off his shirt and, seat- 
ing himself on a block, gave me the whip and bade 
me lay it on his bare back. I dared not refuse 
to obey, but at first I did not strike hard. 
'Harder, harder!' he said, until he had received 
the balance of the account. Small drops of blood 
showed on his back where the tip end of the 
tingling beech cut through. Thus ended the ac- 
count and settlement, which was also my first 
practical illustration of the doctrine of the atone- 
ment. ' ' 

There can be no question that there is an ap- 
peal to the moral nature in substitution volun- 
tarily endured as in this illustration. When it 
deals with a nature not utterly depraved, we may 
have confidence that it will have its effect and 
response, a response far stronger than any iden- 
tical punishment could produce. The question 
we raise is, Would not this appeal come as truly 
in the life of every parent, as he inevitably suffers 
201 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

by toil and privation for his child? Is there not 
a fictitious element here which must be strictly 
limited or it will result in anarchy? If a child 
knew that the parent would take the lashing in- 
stead of himself, would not his nature quickly 
harden? John Brown's course may have reached 
the desired result, but the transaction would seem 
to be quite exceptional and incapable of being 
reduced to a working principle of action. 

Much greater objection can be found in the 
following illustration, because it involves a pure 
subterfuge. There is a noble piece of sculpture 
in the royal palace of Amsterdam which portrays 
the following incident: The king had enacted 
that the perpetrator of a certain crime should 
lose both his eyes. It so happened that his own 
son was the one to commit the deed. The king 
then directed that the son should lose one eye 
and he, the king and father, would give one of his 
eyes. This was done, that the law might lose 
none of its authority. But this is plainly a mere 
pretense, for the losing of the eyes meant in the 
original law the losing of the power of vision. 
As carried out, both king and son retain their 
eyesight, though not in its perfection. If attrib- 
uted to God, this illustration is a stab at his honor. 
We are quite of the opinion that it illustrates 
nothing in the divine action. God does not play 
fast and loose with his laws which mark the re- 
lation between crime and suffering in any such 
way as is here suggested. Pain is the unescap- 
able sequence of transgression; atonement as we 
202 



SUBSTITUTION. 

know it in the New Testament has nothing to do 
with setting it aside. Its endeavor is to do away 
with sin itself and bring the sinner through adop- 
tion of righteousness into fellowship with the 
Father again. 

Another historic illustration may show how 
unreliable and artificial the substitutional prin- 
ciple may become, as well as suggest its origin 
outside of revelation. Abdul-Muttalib, the grand- 
father of Mohammed, was the father of eighteen 
children. "He believed himself bound by a rash 
vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the 
idols of the Kaaba, the sacred temple at Mecca. 
Fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, 
about twenty-four years of age. At the moment 
of the sacrifice some of the Koreish chiefs arose 
against so barbarous an action and so fatal an 
example. By their advice a witch, arrafa, was 
consulted, who declared that Abdallah 's life 
might be purchased by means of the dia (price of 
human blood), and by drawing lots. The dia con- 
sisting of ten camels, the number ten was in- 
scribed on a pointless arrow, and on another the 
name of Abdallah. Nine times the name of Ab- 
dallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time 
that the camels were condemned. So a hundred 
were killed instead of Abdallah, and this number 
became henceforth among the Koreish chiefs the 
price of the dia." ("Historians' History," viii, 
112, 113.) 

This Abdallah was the father of Mohammed. 
The story may have been invented to throw a pe- 
203 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

culiar sacredness around the ancestry of Moham- 
med. But it nevertheless points to a sort of sub- 
conscious belief in the idea of religious ransom 
through substitution. As such, we judge that it 
belongs to the natural or spontaneous elements 
in religion, arising not from revelation, but from 
human invention. 

The Father's forgiveness needs nothing to 
rest upon save the Father's love. They who hold 
to the substitutional idea of atonement have a 
conception of God which is that of a Judge, and 
not that of a Father. Our complaint against it 
is that, when thoroughly analyzed, it is non- 
Biblical and un-Christian. 

Let us bring clearly before our minds the 
emotional activity of a judge. The symbol of his 
feeling is that of a pair of balances. If man will 
do right, the scales are balanced ; the judge feels 
nothing and does nothing against us or for us 
save to give us the protection of law. And if man 
continues forever to do right, the scales remain 
forever balanced; the side which represents our 
cause or merit never is weighted down. The 
judge never is moved with any emotion toward us. 
He remains forever unmoved, undemonstrative 
in relation to us. Is this a true picture of God? 

Then, if we ever do wrong, immediately the 
scales drop down against us. Now the wrath of 
the judge rises against us, and he begins to set 
the machinery of justice in operation for our mis- 
ery or destruction. There is no escape until some 
price has been paid or some satisfaction has been 
204 



SUBSTITUTION. 

rendered that is full and complete. Nothing is 
left to compassion or mercy. Then the scales ad- 
just themselves again, and the wrath of the judge 
dies down, and he becomes quiescent or indiffer- 
ent toward us again, and we pursue our way in 
righteousness and safety. Is this transaction of 
judicial adjustment worthy the name of forgive- 
ness? Surely not. It has no element of forgive- 
ness in it. It is a transaction of justice pure and 
simple by which law has exacted and received its 
full demands. 

Ah, but some' one says, God provides the price 
that is paid, the sacrifice which adjusts the scales. 
We contend that as a Judge he does not. The 
assertion makes the whole picture ridiculous. 
The supposition is carried out by a disruption of 
the Trinity, in such a way that the Father and 
the Son are separated in feeling. The Father re- 
mains as ever the exacting Judge, and the Son 
by his sacrifice pays the price or makes the satis- 
faction. This is a view of deity more artificial 
and unreal than any furnished by the caprices of 
ethnic religions and gives no reality to the ex- 
alted character of the Christian's God. 

How different is all this from the Christian 
doctrine of God! In that the scales are forever 
loaded down in our favor by God's invincible and 
unbroken love. God is ever ready to forgive us 
after our sin, if it can be done under such condi- 
tions that we may derive any profit from it. He 
will forgive, not because a price is paid, not be- 
cause a satisfaction is made, but because he loves 
205 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

us, and our repentance makes it possible for Ms 
desire to forgive to be operative in reconciliation 
toward himself, and a new nature appropriated 
by us. Well does Campbell grow eloquent in his 
attack upon this degradation of God's character. 
He says: "But thus to think of the intercourse 
with God which eternal life implies resting for 
its peace and security on another ground than its 
own essential nature; to think of sonship as cher- 
ished otherwise than as the natural response of 
the Father's heart; to think of the Father as re- 
joicing in this sonship as present in us otherwise 
than as the Father; to feel that the Prodigal son 
feels secure in the welcome of his forgiving father 
on any other ground than the fatherly forgive- 
ness itself which has embraced him; to feel that 
the Father is justified in his own eyes, or would 
justify himself in the eyes of the rest of his 
family, in the gracious welcome which he accords 
to the returning prodigal, on any other ground 
than that which he expresses when he says, 'My 
son was dead and is alive again ; ' to suppose that 
the filial standing must rest on a legal standing, 
and that all this intercourse between the Father 
of spirits and his redeemed offspring must be 
justified by the imputation to them of Christ's 
righteousness, and that this reality of the com- 
munion of the Father and the Son must be recon- 
ciled, in this way of at least seeming fiction, with 
the moral government of God, instead of recog- 
nizing that communion itself as what is the high- 
est fulfillment of moral government and the ulti- 
206 



SUBSTITUTION. 

mate and perfect justification of all the means 
which God has employed in bringing it to pass: 
these are thoughts which have no place in the 
light in which the apostle says, 'It became him 
for whom are all things, in bringing many sons 
unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation 
perfect through sufferings.' " ("Nature of the 
Atonement," 300-1.) 

Different authors, while still adhering to the 
term "satisfaction" in describing the atonement, 
yet have made such admissions in modification of 
it that the term is no longer a correct description 
of their position. Merrill says: "But it must be 
understood that the substitute (for penalty) did 
not absolutely cancel the penalty. It only sus- 
pended it till after probation, while its final exe- 
cution is to be averted by personal acceptance of 
Christ and loyal obedience to him. The atone- 
ment thus gives room for the mediatorial scheme 
and all remedial agencies. ("Atonement," 112.) 

After such a statement it is hard to see what 
place is left for the idea of legal satisfaction. 
The atonement by this representation takes on a 
very different aspect from that which is usually 
brought to our mind by the term. It is rather 
difficult to see that it is an atonement at all under 
the demands made by " satisf actionists. " It 
seems to lack in the following vital points : 1. It 
is not a penalty for sins ; Christ suffered, but was 
not punished. 2. It does not in itself release 
from penalty, hence is hardly a substitute for 
penalty ; for unless the sinner accepts Christ and 
207 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

is obedient to him, the whole weight of the moral 
law rests upon him, and penalty will be visited 
upon him. It is difficult, then, to see what is left 
more than that which is claimed under the term 
"Moral Influence." It has suffering on the part 
of Christ that did not release from law, but was 
endured in order that sinners might escape pun- 
ishment if they would. 

It must be remembered that a large part of 
those for whom Christ died on any theory (ex- 
cept that of a limited atonement for the Elect 
only) are not saved from the death for which his 
death was intended to be a substitute. They die 
unreconciled, defiled with sin, and no salvation, 
the nature of which we know anything, ever comes 
to them. We must see, then, that Christ does not 
die for them in any mechanical or automatic 
sense. He might as well not have died at all, 
so far as any helpful effects that come to them. 

We must conclude, then, that his death is not 
in the region of mere legal effect, where lack of 
realization of the benefit would be a gross injus- 
tice. It must be in the region of a moral pro- 
vision, the exhibition of a benevolent purpose, 
but in itself only provisional in its effect, to be 
accepted and acted upon, if any good shall come 
to those for whom it was intended. 

This consideration is in itself sufficient to 
place it in the field of moral influence and remove 
it invincibly from the field of legal action. It is 
the plea of a father to his child, who still has the 
power to resist, and not the verdict of a judge, 
208 



SUBSTITUTION. 

whose judgment is to be carried out by some 
sheriff irrespective of what the accused shall do. 

Defenders of Substitution have much to say 
of the solidarity of the race and organic union. 
The solidarity of the race is unquestioned; but 
by confining attention to it a view of sin may 
be held which is not that of a moral quality. Any- 
thing affecting the race as an organism must be 
of the nature of a physical disease, something 
which operates entirely apart from the personal 
will of the individual. For an affection of this 
kind, mistakenly called a sin, some atonement 
might be made without the co-operation of the 
sinner ; that is, the sinful affection and the atone- 
ment for it may both be objective matters, with 
which men as individual moral beings have noth- 
ing to do. But this is a very different view of 
sin and its remedy from that which the Bible pre- 
sents, which is moral on both sides. An atone- 
ment for moral guilt can not be made apart from 
the co-operation of the guilty individual. Substi- 
tution, either with or without consent, can have 
no place. 

The literature of our subject has much to say 
about the ''whole human race being in the loins 
of Adam," and therefore the whole race became 
sinners. Now that biology has made clear to us 
the exact facts concerning the physical origin of 
lives and the relation to our progenitors, it is 
sheer nonsense to say of human persons consid- 
ered as moral beings that all of them or any of 
them were in the loins of Adam. This is such a 
209 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

materialistic conception that there is probably not 
in the world to-day a scientist who will stand for 
it. Man as a moral being is not a cell. In no 
sense that carries the least shadow of moral re- 
sponsibility was any man now living in the loins 
of Adam. There is nothing for such an argument 
but a sheer and unqualified denial and appeal to 
the facts of life: for there is not and never can 
be any evidence for the position presented that 
can be subjected to criticism. And yet the state- 
ment continues to be made again and again, even 
in recent discussions. 

A statement of similar character and import 
identifies us with Jesus Christ. A recent writer 
is quoted as follows: "We were with him in all 
that he did; were with him in his crucifixion, in 
his death, in his resurrection, and in his glorifica- 
tion. He was literally put to death, and all whom 
he represented died with him, were buried with 
him, and arose with him, not physically, but con- 
structively. " 

Dr. Orr says : "There is again the organic con- 
stitution of our race, which permits his entrance 
into it as its new Head, to redeem it by his obe- 
dience and death from the ruin entailed upon it 
by the disobedience of the first Adam." ("Side 
Lights on Christian Doctrine," 138.) We think 
the organic character of humanity would permit 
Christ to redeem it in any sense that it is an 
organism. But in the moral sense humanity is 
not one organic whole, but is a collection of in- 
dividuals, each responsible for his own conduct 
210 



SUBSTITUTION. 

and to receive an individual reward. It remains 
a question of fact, moreover, whether Christ did 
lift the consequences of sin from the race as a 
complete organism. (Cf. pp. 167-169.) 

Any personal identification of ourselves with 
Jesus that carries any moral accountability is 
sheer fiction. One may identify himself with 
Christ by faith, a spiritual relation, instituted by 
a spiritual and free moral action. But, of course, 
this can be done now in this present year of grace. 
No one personally had any relation to Christ in 
the sense mentioned in the year 29 A. D. If orig- 
inally related to his crucifixion, it was by some 
bond that was involuntary, unfree, impersonal. 
Every mark of personality and of moral charac- 
ter has to be negated before one can even think 
of such a relation. 

Out of such fictional material no theory of 
atonement can be constructed that will bear any 
examination or be the basis of personal and sav- 
ing faith. It is built not in the realm of fact, does 
not stand upon the ground, has no mark of revel- 
ation upon it ; but, to use the word of this recent 
writer, it is "constructively" done out of fancies, 
abstractions, and fictions. There can not be any 
criticism or examination of it, for it has no real 
material to test or examine. 

Drawn on by this substitutional idea, Bishop 
Merrill makes another application of the idea of 
solidarity that is equally faulty with those criti- 
cised above. He says: "In some way, possibly 
beyond all human comprehension, he stood for the 
211 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

race, embodied in himself the whole of humanity, 
or so represented it that the nature he offered in 
sacrifice was as nearly the nature that sinned as 
it is possible for us to conceive."' (" Atone- 
ment," 96.) 

Much unclear thinking can be indulged in by 
the use of the word "nature." It seems to be 
used here in some such sense as identical sub- 
stance, as if it were a common stuff out of which 
all humanity is composed, and because Jesus was 
of this same stuff, therefore he could stand for 
us, and offer in sacrifice a part of it which would 
represent the whole. Now, if that is a proper 
representation of the race, if there were a sort of 
substance, a part of which in some individual 
form had sinned, this might pass as illuminating 
some truth. But when we deal with the guilt of 
sin we are dealing with persons : for only persons 
can be guilty of sin ; only persons need an atone- 
ment for sin. Stuff can not sin. If it were some 
impersonal stuff that God had to redeem, he could 
do it by some fiat, and all would be finished. 

When we come to deal with persons on their 
moral side, each one is complete in himself; he 
does not have a "nature" which another person 
shares with him, as he shares in the material sub- 
stance which we call flesh with all other animal 
beings. His nature is nothing more than the 
quality of himself — physical quality if one is 
speaking of his physical nature, moral quality if 
one is speaking of his moral being. How any one 
can share his moral nature is beyond conception. 
212 



SUBSTITUTION. 

We only need to turn upon such a verbal state- 
ment and hold it up to examination, and it be- 
comes an absurdity, an impossible mental object. 
So with this vanishing of a "nature" that could 
be shared vanishes the whole notion of Christ's 
moral substitution or representative character of 
us on the cross. 

If we think of some concrete aggregation of 
human units in some organized form, as that of 
a nation, then we may think of that nation acting 
in some given way, a way that, owing to the 
social bonds that hold it together, may bring upon 
it as a whole either praise or blame for its action 
as an organism. Such an organized social body 
might have a representative that could act in its 
name and bring to it a blame or credit by his 
action. If the human race is conceived thus in 
its sinning, then the representative relation of 
Jesus may be made good. But when we come to 
treat of sin we always make our appeal to the 
individual and teach that the individual may find 
forgiveness of sins. If we would assume the Uni- 
versalist's position and claim redemption for a 
race in an organized race-form, then the repre- 
sentative character of Christ may hold. In that 
sense he was a member of the race and could act 
for the race; but the results of his action must 
come to the entire race, and can not be individu- 
ally conditioned. Personal conversion and faith 
as a condition of salvation are out of the question, 
if this is to be the form under which we claim 
Christ as our representative. 
213 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

But this is far from the meaning which is 
presented under the figure of representing our 
race. "Nature" in the sense used never sins. 
"Nature" can never atone for sin. Persons only- 
can sin ; persons only can atone for sin. In moral 
quality each person's act is his own: no one else 
can ever share in its merits or demerits. For 
morally each person is an independent unit. Only 
physically are we bound together in an organism. 
Any defect in personality which destroys indi- 
vidual freedom to the same extent destroys moral 
accountability and sin. 

To us the most unobjectionable statement of 
substitution possible seems far from lucid or con- 
vincing. Thus Dr. C. C. Hall says : " On the Cross 
of Christ, in the body and soul of the Representa- 
tive Man, the sin of man is judged and condemned 
unto death as a thing intolerable in the universe 
of God; and thus eternal love itself meets the de- 
mand of eternal righteousness, and through a di- 
vine sacrifice, by enduring the condemnation of 
sin, makes possible its forgiveness." ("Gospel 
of Divine Sacrifice," 92.) If we pass by for the 
moment the difficulty of getting Christ under the 
load of sin, so that he could have any relation to 
it through condemnation, and assume it possible 
— an assumption really impossible, that he could 
be treated in any sense as bearing sin — after such 
an arrangement has been made, we then can not 
see how his death has any reference to any one ex- 
cept himself. His death will have relation to sin, 
214 



SUBSTITUTION. 

which by hypothesis has become identified with 
him and will satisfy the law in his individual case. 
But in the sense of a price it can not accomplish 
anything for any one else. The law's demands 
are for the one who sins ; guilt is untransferable. 
Physical pain as an imposed penalty may be 
transferred; but moral pain can not be. It may 
be dulled by moral insensibility; but that in no 
sense or degree transfers it to another. 

Love, sympathy, social relation may tie us up 
with others, so that when they suffer we suffer 
with them ; but this well-known law is in no sense 
the substitution that is contended for. It points 
the way to what seems to us the true explanation 
of the Cross, but by no manner of means is it 
the traditional substitution. 

There are those who cling to the term ' ' substi- 
tution" while repudiating its historic and essen- 
tial content. This may show the force which 
tradition has upon us, but it tends to misunder- 
standing and should be abandoned. Thus that al- 
together admirable writer, Dr. Stevens, while pre- 
senting us very desirable views, does so under 
the term "substitution." He says: "If Christ's 
sufferings can not have been the quantitative 
equivalent, nor have had the moral quality of the 
punishment due in the moral order to sin, in what 
sense can they have been a substitute for man's 
punishment? They can have been so only in the 
sense that, though not the same in quantity or 
quality, they answered the essential moral ends 
of punishment. In place of the punishment of the 
215 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

sinner there took place another gracious substi- 
tution of another method of vindication and satis- 
fying the moral requirements of law and holiness. 
The substitution of Christ for us, therefore, does 
not mean that he stood in our place and took our 
punishment as an innocent man might stand be- 
neath a descending weapon which was to avenge 
a civil crime — a substitution which would be 
purely mechanical, and without ethical value as 
affecting the guilt of the offender; nor does it 
mean that he personally assumed our guilt and 
suffered its punishment — a punishment which, if 
not impossible, would be inherently unjust. 
Christ's suffering and death for us mean the sub- 
stitution of another course of divine action in- 
stead of the infliction of penalty. This method is 
not a merely lenient treatment, an unconditional 
forgiveness of sins, instead of a penal procedure 
against them; it is a course of action which ef- 
fectually rescues God's action in the treatment 
of sin from the charge or appearance of laxness." 
("The Pauline Theology," 245, 246.) 

These distinctions are so comprehensive that 
there is left no standing for substitution in the 
sense in which theologians have understood the 
term. 



216 



Chapter VII. 

THE DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT— SPIR- 
ITUAL INFLUENCE. 

For the Lamb of God became like an innocent sheep 
being led to the slaughter, that he may take away the 
sin of the world. He who supplies reason to all is made 
like a lamb which is dumb before her shearer, that 
we might be purified by his death, which is given as a 
sort of medicine against the opposing power, and also 
against the sin of those who open their minds to the 
truth. For the death of Christ reduced to impotence 
those powers which war against the human race, and 
it set free from sin by a power beyond our words the 
life of each believer. Since, then, he takes away sin 
until every enemy shall be destroyed and death last of 
all, in order that the whole world may be free from 
sin, therefore John points to him and says, "Behold 
the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
world." It is not that he said that he will take it 
away in the future, . . . nor that he has taken it, 
but is not taking it away now. His taking away sin 
is still going on, He is taking it away from every in- 
dividual in the world, till sin be taken away from the 
whole world, and the Saviour deliver the kingdom pre- 
pared and completed to the Father, a kingdom in which 
no sin is left at all, and which, therefore, is ready to 
accept the Father as its King, and which on the other 
hand is waiting to receive all that God has to bestow, 
217 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

fully, and in every part, at that time when the saying 
is fulfilled, "That God may be all in all." (Origen's 
"Com. on John," I, 37.) 

Some years ago Phillips Brooks gave a course 
of lectures under the title, "The Influence of 
Jesus on the Moral Life of Man." In it he dis- 
claimed the idea of considering Christianity as a 
system of doctrine, but treated it as a personal 
force. "Every man's power," he says, "is his 
idea multiplied by and projected through his per- 
sonality." And thus he treats the subject of In- 
fluence. By that he thinks "Jesus is the Re- 
deemer of man into the fatherhood of God. ' ' He 
does not assume some non-moral force mystically 
applied by which man comes into sonship; but 
it is done by the truth that man is God's child 
announced by and projected through the person- 
ality of Jesus. We can not analyze the operation 
of this force and show how spirit thus acts upon 
spirit; we only recognize it as a well-known op- 
eration to which we have given the name "In- 
fluence." It is entirely unnecessary to assume 
some other process acting here. This action of 
spirit on spirit through the medium of a truth is 
entirely adequate for the results, even though 
those results are the most marvelous phenomena 
known to us. The following word from Meyer may 
suggest to us that there is far more involved in 
spiritual influence than we have usually credited 
to it. "I think it probable that the facts of the 
metetherial world are far more complex than the 
218 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

facts of the material world; and that the ways 
in which spirits perceive and communicate, apart 
from fleshly organisms, are subtler and more 
varied than any perception or communication 
which we know. Just as each organism is in fact 
a system of forces, influencing and influenced by 
other similar systems of forces in known and un- 
known ways, so also must we regard human 
spirits as interacting systems of forces, yet more 
complex and yet further beyond our ken." 
("Human Personality," i, 136.) 

There are those who emphatically discount 
and repudiate the word "influence," as used in 
the relations of spiritual beings. To them it 
seems an insignificant relation, and does not con- 
vey a depth of operation such as they imagine 
they have conceived. They speak of certain re- 
lations as "mere influence." When pressed for 
a word that would convey a meaning of the inter- 
action of free and sovereign spirits, they might 
find themselves in a difficult situation. They 
might use the term mystical simply to cover up 
the fact that they had no definite mental concep- 
tion. Some, however, would not hesitate to use 
terms Scriptural in origin, to which they give a 
pantheistic significance. "Christ in you" and 
"you in Christ" are phrases which are often used 
in a sense which is metaphysically unjustifiable. 
It becomes so whenever we put into our thought 
a real transfer of substance. These are beautiful 
terms when used with a moral significance, but 
destructive of Christianity when used pantheis- 
219 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

tically. Their legitimate significance is limited 
to the sense of spiritual influence. 

A recent writer thus comments on the word: 
"The word * influence' has a curious history. It 
is obviously derived from Latin words meaning 
inflowing, and was very widely used many gen- 
erations ago to describe the supposed action of 
the stars. Astrologists believed — as indeed did 
all people with any pretentions of culture in those 
days — that a strange power resided in celestial 
bodies, which operated on the affairs of men in 
such a way that all human destiny was really de- 
termined by the movements of the planets and 
fixed stars. This power was described as flow- 
ing in to mankind from the heavens, and men be- 
came and wrought what they did by virtue of 
this influence." As a pictorial representation of 
spiritual occurrences this ancient conceit may be 
illuminating. 

Influence among spiritual beings is on a par 
in the spiritual world with "gravitation" among 
material objects in the physical world. We will 
probably be unable to define it; but it goes as 
far as we should ever go when thinking of the 
action of one free spiritual being upon another. 
God has given us sovereignty. That means that 
he will never forcibly control us. Yet this sover- 
eignty is not so invincible that we live absolutely 
alone. We are acted upon by others up to the 
measure of "influence;" but when that action 
passes into mastery, personality is destroyed, 
freedom is lost, morality is impossible. "Influ- 
220 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

ence," then, is no insignificant word. Instead of 
discounting it we should appreciate it as the far- 
thest reach of our personal power over others 
like us and the farthest limits of the power that 
God has set for himself in his action upon the 
children born in his likeness. 

Let it be noted that atonement through spir- 
itual influence is not opposed to something more 
vital, but to an objective atonement, which of it- 
self has no influence upon character by any oper- 
ation that we can trace. 

A quotation from Forsyth will show a very 
current view of an "influence" that is not in- 
fluential, an influence that is regarded as quies- 
cent. He says ("Positive Preaching and the 
Modern Mind," 345 fg.) : "Or he (Jesus) might 
have done it by a sinless but statuesque person- 
ality, who embodied his love and visualized it to 
us as its living image and our perfect example 
or type. But even that is more of a spectacle 
than a salvation; it is something more aesthetic 
for our spiritual contemplation than dynamic for 
our moral redemption. ... It leaves him still 
a somewhat inert personality, a spiritual figure 
finished all but the arms. He can not take hold 
of the world and wrestle with it. He is not among 
the mighty doers of the race. He remains but a 
gracious influence. ' ' Against such an undynamic, 
statuesque Christ he then presents his idea in the 
following words : ' ' The last moral reality is a per- 
son not in repose, but in action with the world. ' ' 
(p. 346.) 

221 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

It is not difficult to construct an argument 
and force a conclusion if such a contradiction of 
ideas go unchallenged. Repose is here repre- 
sented as "gracious influence," but it does 
nothing; something that is not "influence" is 
action and accomplishes something in the moral 
world. 

In a world where the spirit is contained in a 
body this conception of uninfluential "influence" 
is a natural, even though not a logical one. We 
can think of the body in repose and the spirit in 
a gracious and benevolent attitude, though even 
here we can hardly see where the idea of influence 
is justified. But in a world where we are dealing 
with spirit alone — moral forces only, the contrast 
is an absurdity. What could we mean by saying 
that the spirit is exerting a "gracious influence" 
and yet is doing nothing? What can we mean by 
taking hold of something, and doing something, 
in addition to exerting a gracious influence? In- 
fluencing is spiritual action, the only kind of spir- 
itual action that we know anything about, unless 
we can conceive of a degree of action that goes 
beyond influence and takes another spirit into its 
control, and against its will forces it to do what 
it would not do, if it could help it. 

Again, does any one think it possible to be a 
"gracious influence" without influencing any- 
thing or anybody? That which makes one an 
influence is the effect produced, the power ex- 
erted. It is idle to speak of an influence that 
does not influence. 

222 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

One feels as he tries to gain the thought of 
older writers on the atonement that they con- 
ceived it as a sort of spectacle, an objective entity, 
established out there as a sort of objectified price 
which is being paid under stress of a legal re- 
quirement. Law must have a formula fulfilled 
before there is release of the prisoner. Not that 
any one is enriched by the price paid, or has any- 
thing which he did not have before. It is a case 
where there is a great loss to one without any 
corresponding gain to any one else. No person 
gains anything; only justice, an abstraction, has 
a vast penalty paid unto it. 

We can not escape the feeling that it would 
be better to have the dealing with persons, and 
not with abstractions. Our view would make the 
sacrifice just the same in absolute value and suf- 
fering, but it would make a direct appeal to per- 
sons. It is a pierced hand and heart reached out 
unto men, that they may relent and give o'er 
their wicked rebellion and cease from their base- 
less suspicion toward their Father in heaven. 
Christ on the cross pleads — not to the Father; 
for the Father and he are one in all the essentials 
of this transaction; God the Father does not need 
such suffering to make him willing to forgive — 
nor to justice, which is nothing as soon as it is 
dislodged from a person ; but to men, who do not 
know God's love, do not trust it, do not appro- 
priate its benefits. 

The view from which we dissent is set forth 
in the following quotation from Dale, who claims 
223 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

to be presenting the view of Paul. He says: 
"From this just condemnation, from this right- 
eous wrath, there is redemption in Christ; for 
Christ 'in his blood' — not in his personal holi- 
ness merely — has been placed by God before the 
eye and heart of all mankind as a propitiatory 
sacrifice. Sacrifices are not offered to men, but 
to God, and the direct intention of this sacrifice 
is to avert that supreme peril which, according 
to the preceding argument, menaces the whole 
race. The death of Christ is represented — not as 
a method by which God touches the human heart 
— but as the ground on which God cancels human 
guilt, and delivers the guilty from the wrath 
which threatens them. . . . The effect of the 
death of Christ in atoning for human sin is so 
immediate, so independent of any change in hu- 
man character, that he (Paul) has to enter on 
a new line of argument in order to show that 
those who are justified can not continue in sin." 
("Atonement," 236, 248.) The view of Paul, if 
here correctly interpreted, has no other statement 
in the New Testament. We are here entirely out 
of the atmosphere of the Gospels as they reflect 
the teachings of Jesus. Nor can it be said that 
Jesus anywhere gives even in germinal form the 
idea that God's wrath needs to be averted by a 
propitiatory sacrifice. It might be better for 
Paul if we could find some other line of interpre- 
tation more consistent with the teachings of Jesus. 
Especially unfortunate is that interpretation 
224 






DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

which refuses to the Cross the means of God's 
appeal to the human heart. If it does not have 
this power, then the knowledge of it would seem 
superfluous, and the great ungospeled world is 
receiving the same benefits from the Cross that 
the world receives which has had its full and ex- 
plicit announcement. This is to make the gospel 
an automatic legal operation, dispensing its bene- 
fits unconditioned by knowledge or volition. Its 
working under this view is magical rather than 
moral, dependent only on the fiat of Almighty 
God. Man may receive its benefits, but in doing 
so he changes neither his character nor his con- 
sciousness. Nothing he can do will enhance the 
benefits or hinder them. He may well be morally 
and intellectually indifferent to it. God the Fa- 
ther will arrange it all. 

Such theories of atonement have been only a 
judicial formula. They have sought to deal with 
the abstract relations of law and justice. They 
have not furnished, considered in themselves, any 
redeeming power upon the personality of man. 
They describe transactions that might as well 
have been wrought out beyond our vision, as they 
do not directly even presume to have any influ- 
ence over us. The atonement as thus viewed was 
something done for us, independently of our 
knowledge or choice, and it works out its result 
apart from our volition or co-operation. 

As factors of redemption these theories may 
be entirely neglected. Whatever is done for us 
225 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

in them is done without our volition, and they 
will accomplish all that they can when we are 
entirely ignorant of the facts and the operation. 

This relation of the theory of atonement to 
our knowledge and life is in itself a suspicious 
circumstance. God does not usually so act in 
any of the processes of salvation. Salvation in 
all its traceable steps is a co-operation between 
the human and the divine agency. If atonement 
is an exception, it is a very marked one. 

Over against such an extra-moral dialectic in 
jurisprudence we hold to a theory of spiritual 
dynamics, a plan through which God works out 
the love of his heart in a way that conquers the 
human heart. We believe that it harmonizes 
with the highest law, but it is not on its face 
simply a system of legal satisfaction. It is rather 
the statement of the highest potency of spirit 
operating on spirit. So when we come to examine 
the method by which atonement is actually 
wrought — and we believe it is wrought out in the 
heart of the sinner rather than in some objectified 
form — we describe it as the method of Spiritual 
Influence. 

We would prefer to avoid the prejudices that 
gather about the phrase "Moral Influence;" yet 
it is important for us to draw attention to the 
kind of influence which we believe the atonement 
is to exert, and the method by which it achieves 
its results. We shall use the word moral as 
opposed to physical or any other influence that 
operates without the consciousness and volition 
226 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

of the sinner. This supreme divine operation on 
the heart of man can not be performed by any- 
non-moral method. God will appeal to the heart 
of the sinner to be reconciled to himself, but he 
will not force the reconciliation, even though that 
were not in itself a contradiction of terms. He 
will invite the assent and consent of the sinner 
to the new relations of life; he will mourn over 
him if the invitation is refused ; but he will never 
unmake man as a moral being in any attempt to 
rescue him from the perdition incident to a wrong 
use of freedom. The term "moral influence" 
contains an indispensable and unavoidable truth, 
a truth that can not otherwise be properly and 
correctly phrased. We may hope that it will be 
weighed by the reader, not under the inertia of 
the old prejudices, but with the mental allowance 
that its truth may be better stated than formerly, 
and better comprehended. "The moral problem 
set in our need of salvation can only be solved 
by a moral movement in the God who undertook 
it. A redemptive work is moral or nothing. . . . 
If the incarnation was not above all things a 
moral achievement by God, the redemption can 
not be a moral conquest of man." (Forsyth, 
< ' Person and Place of Jesus Christ, " 235. ) "Je- 
sus aimed at man 's redemption. But he expected 
to win men from sin not by a transaction, but by 
a vision ; not by the thorns and cross of Calvary, 
but by the eternal Saviorship of God, which he 
knew that his Palestinian sufferings would re- 
veal." (Aschem, "Help from the Hills," 207.) 
227 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

Those who discount moral influence utterly 
might be helped to a more just view if they would 
ask, What is its alternative? What kind of ef- 
fective influence may that be which is not moral? 

At least one line of answer that has engaged 
the mind of the theological world and now 
strongly holds it is an influence that we may call 
legal. We are not now to think of law as a 
method of divine activity, but as Divine fiat, an- 
nouncement, rule, command. If such an influence 
goes so far as to be sovereignly enacted, it may, 
indeed, be very effective ; but it is instantly seen 
that it loses its spiritual character, and in an 
atonement under such an influence God would be 
operating on men as he might operate on a rene- 
gade world or some other obstreperous material 
creation, if such a conception may be used to 
illustrate our thought, however unthinkable as a 
reality. Such an atonement would not, indeed, be 
a moral influence; it must be classed as a phys- 
ical or violent and non-moral influence. Can any 
one see in such a view an improvement over moral 
influence f 

We must admit that this method of operation 
on the nature of man, which does not win his 
consent and does not co-operate with his choice, 
is a view that is widely held. To some it may 
be acceptable after reflection. It was an element 
in the Calvinistic view of regeneration, by which 
God's sovereign action, producing repentance and 
faith, preceded man's choice of salvation. But 
that any one can hold that such a method of op- 
228 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

eration, exalting mere power, is a view superior 
to the alternative moral methods, in which God 
and man co-operate for the work of salvation, is 
to us inexplicable. Spiritual forces are moral 
forces; moral influences rank highest in dignity 
and worth. Moral influence is of a nobler sort 
than legal influence conceived as self-enacting fiat. 
They who object to " moral influence" might 
be puzzled to define the power that accomplishes 
anything through atonement upon human nature. 
They belong logically with those who hold that 
atonement is not wrought in the nature of man 
at all ; that it is not an effect wrought upon man, 
but one that is worked out for the benefit of man ; 
that not in the will and disposition of man are 
its transformations, but in the mind of God. This 
binds these objectors to "moral influence" to the 
satisfaction theory. Our purpose for the moment 
is merely to make that clear, and to call attention 
to the position, equally manifest, that the satis- 
faction atonement in itself does nothing for the 
moral nature of man. It may, if true, be left en- 
tirely in the speculative field. It has no mission 
in transforming man's moral nature. The atone- 
ment to which we hold, on the other hand, consists 
in all those forces of love and spiritual power 
which change the heart and purpose of man. 
Atonement occurs only in those and for those 
who yield to the loving solicitations of the Re- 
deemer, who in his life of loving and self-denying 
service and upon the Cross in dying agonies 
produces the moral drawings, which change 
229 



THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

man's opposition to his Heavenly Father into a 
surrender to his love and a loyalty to his govern- 
ment. The satisfaction atonement does not need 
to be known or believed by us to accomplish all 
that is claimed for it. The atonement through 
displayed love, on the other hand, is effective 
only where known and accepted. 

If it be objected that children below moral 
consciousness and heathen who are living up to 
their light, but ignorant of what has been done 
to save them, are thus left without atonement, 
we reply, Where there is no rebellion there is no 
occasion for reconciliation. Children who have 
not yet violated moral law, because they could not 
yet know its obligations, are incapable of sin in 
the evangelical sense. Atonement for them can 
have no meaning. 

Concerning heathen, we can not conceive of 
any benefit coming to them from an atonement 
that does not change their spiritual condition, 
make them actually pure in life. What profit is 
it to them to assert that an atonement has been 
wrought out for them which does not save them, 
does them no actual good so far as we can dis- 
cern. Their need of atonement is manifestly not 
greater than their need of purification of life, 
which the satisfaction atonement does not pro- 
vide them. 

There are two great facts that spread in the 
human race under an identical or corresponding 
law : they are the contagion of sin and the redemp- 
230 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

tion through moral influence. In the latter half 
of the fifth chapter of Romans "the human race 
is conceived of as a moral unity that possesses a 
collective life of its own. Humanity is not an ag- 
gregate of atoms; it rather resembles a tree 
whose leaves are distinct, while at the same time 
they partake of the common life and the qualities 
of the stem with which they are organically con- 
nected. Without ceasing to be personally respon- 
sible, we are so related to the race as a whole that 
its sin lives in us and involves in us consequences 
that are not the result of our individual actions. 
Not through the personal sin of each, but through 
the sin of one man, has death come into the world. 
All are included in that one, and in idea, or po- 
tentially, sinned and died in his act. 'The judg- 
ment of all men was by one man to condemnation' 
(Rom. 5:16), and through the organic unity of 
the race, sin, thus originating, worked itself out 
in actual sinning and dying of all the individual 
members of mankind. But Adam in this respect 
was a type of the man to come, i. e., of Christ. 
In him humanity came to possess a second Adam, 
or Representative, who summed up in himself 
and realized perfectly its capacities for the higher 
life, and in his actings he became the proper 
organ of the race. In his holy and sinless person 
humanity was born again, as it were ; abandoned 
its revolt against God and returned to its proper 
allegiance to him; overcame evil, and lived the 
perfect life well-pleasing to God. Christ thus be- 
gins a new period in the moral history of man- 
231 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

kind, imparting a new element to our collective 
being; and for that relation of 'all' to Adam, 
which masses them, through their organic con- 
nection with him, partakers of his sin and death, 
there is substituted now a new relation of 'all' 
to Christ, the second Adam, that makes them 
partakers of his righteousness and life, a relation 
which in its ideal truth holds of mankind as a 
whole, and becomes a reality in those who con- 
nect themselves with him by their personal faith, 
and of the new humanity of which he is the 
Head." (Somerville, "Paul's Conception of 
Christ," 86, 87.) 

This author 's view seems to us near the truth. 
In the chapter on "Substitution," pp. 209-214, 
we presented our strong protest against a moral 
identification of two spiritual beings. But that 
statement needs properly the qualification which 
the possibility of moral influence between persons 
presents. Our moral separateness is not lost, as 
our physical separateness is, in this human or- 
ganism; but a relationship is found which may 
be correctly described by the word contagion or 
influence. The old view of substituting Adam's 
sin for ours, or attributing his sin to us, and of 
crediting Christ's righteousness to us, has at 
least the support that we now see to be involved 
in the working of social laws through the unitary 
organism of humanity. We do not say that 
Adam's sin was ours by judicial pronouncement, 
but the sin entered the race through the working 
of social contagion. If sin entered any individ- 
232 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

ual of the race, it would permeate inevitably all 
the members, though, of course, not after the 
manner of judicial edict, instantly, but after the 
manner of the contagion of a disease. 

On the other hand, any saving power pos- 
sessed by any member of the race would by the 
operation of the same social law find its way 
through the race, and we would have what we 
now know to be the process and condition of 
human history, the contention of the principles 
of good and evil in the human heart. As such a 
force, but distinguished from all others in that 
he revealed the Father, and thus was pre-emi- 
nently a saving force, is the life, teaching, and 
death of Jesus Christ. 

A very important light falls upon our conten- 
tion by the observation that the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews names as the first result 
of the death of Christ, that through suffering he 
learned obedience and was perfected as the 
Author of salvation (2:10; 5:8). The under- 
lying thought seems to be : He who was to grap- 
ple with this tremendous problem of the salvation 
of mankind so lost, must be fitted by the deepest 
suffering for his task. This would be inexplicable 
if the task were merely the fulfillment of a judi- 
cial formula, but is quite manifest if the task is 
the grappling with the moral influences that sway 
human nature in its depths. To appease the Fa- 
ther in a passive death would seem to require 
no preparation save absolute innocence; but to 
overcome human opposition in a spiritual strug- 
233 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

gle would demand whatever of discipline that 
might come from the most educative of all forces, 
the hot fires of suffering. 

We may anticipate that we shall be attacked 
for illustrating this supreme redemptive force by 
other social forces. It may by a superficial atten- 
tion be said that we are placing this on a level 
with other saving forces that come from other 
members of the race. We do not place it on a 
level. We believe that no other force was ever 
comparable in power with it; but we can not see 
but that it operates by the same social law as 
other known influences among men. It can be 
excepted from that method of operation only by 
insisting that Christ's death was the one event 
in history which appeased the anger of the Father 
and satisfied the exactions of his law of holiness. 
We are unable to hold that view, and hence hold 
that Christ was the supreme influence, operating 
through social laws, that has secured the pleasure 
of the Father in that it has secured the righteous- 
ness of man. We understand the Eedeemer to 
affirm that his followers shall follow in his re- 
demptive footsteps and share in the work of rec- 
onciling the world to the Father. They are to 
drink his cup, fellowship his redemptive suffer- 
ings, and complete the conquest of the world by 
love. 

We recapitulate our argument as follows: 
We have rejected the idea that the benefit of the 
atonement comes to us through Christ suffering 
234 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

in our stead for our personal misdeeds. In what 
way, then, does atonement actually benefit sin- 
ners? What is the nature of the operation by 
which we secure salvation through Christ's death? 
What is atonement's dynamic? We answer with 
fullness of conviction that Christ's death oper- 
ates to the restoration of man to fellowship with 
God in the same manner in which all real power, 
as distinguished from change in legal relation, is 
exerted upon human conduct, viz., through spir- 
itual or moral influence. This is the name for all 
actual impression that can be made upon the 
human spirit, viewed as a moral or free being. 
Says J. M. Whiton: "To the historical work of 
Christ, in his sacrificial life and death of love, 
we give the name of the Atonement, because that 
work, as it affects us in our contemplation of it, 
begets the enabling power within us to accomplish 
the real atonement in conscience, which is ac- 
cepted in heaven because effective on earth, satis- 
fying to God because satisfying to that which is 
of God in us. And so we rest in the word of the 
Apostle John, 'Behold the Lamb of God who 
taketh away the sins of the world.' " ("The Di- 
vine Satisfaction," 18.) 

The Substitutionary idea was that of some- 
thing done for us in a legal forum which does 
not even depend upon our knowledge for its ac- 
complishment. As such it does not record itself 
in the human consciousness at all. We may lo- 
cate it as transacted in heaven, or wherever we 
may locate the Divine Consciousness. In itself 
235 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

it can produce no evidence of its working in 
human history or consciousness. It is all done in 
the mind of God. We have rejected it because we 
can discover nothing in the mind of God that 
made it necessary. In that rejection we lose noth- 
ing that can ever have been recorded in human 
consciousness itself. 

The substitutionary transaction must have 
had its ''moral" side in order that there should 
have been any appeal to the human heart or the 
basis of any voluntary change in human conduct 
or character. An atonement that consisted only 
in its substitutionary features would have been a 
poor instrument, indeed, for the Almighty to use 
in conquering the rebellion of the human heart. 
As substitutional, it was complete when abso- 
lutely objective, outside of human knowledge and 
impression. God's moral conquest of the world 
would have been just the same without it as with 
it. They who hold to it must at the same time 
affirm its moral appeal in order that there might 
be some power brought to bear on the human 
heart for its conquest and regeneration. Thus, 
in rejecting it, we lose nothing that can ever 
operate in changing the heart and mind of men. 
We retain the moral element of the atonement 
as the only operative element, leaving the substi- 
tutional element to those who can persuade them- 
selves that it has a foundation in God's wrath, the 
only possible foundation that it can have. "Re- 
member above all things that the love we have 
236 



DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 

to do with is holy love. And holiness is the eternal 
power which must do and do till it see itself 
everywhere. That is its only satisfaction and 
atonement, not the pound of flesh, but entire, ab- 
solute response to its own active kind." (For- 
syth, "Positive Preaching," 350.) 



237 



Chapter VIII. 

THE OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICA- 
TION 

When atonement is effective, two results ensue 
to the sinner: first, there is a change in his re- 
lation to law, and second, there is a change in 
his moral nature. The second result, which in- 
cludes the ideas of Regeneration and Sanctifica- 
tion, we reserve to another chapter; we are now 
to deal with Justification. 

Justification is surely not a justification of 
one in his sins, or for his sins, or the justifica- 
tion of his sins; in no sense does it change the 
character of moral deeds, or the relation to right- 
eousness of an immoral doer. Anything of that 
nature would be the abrogation of law and right- 
eousness. It is difficult, then, to see that it means 
anything more than the pardon of one who has 
sinned, for some consideration that will not de- 
stroy law or righteousness, a consideration that 
may further the ends of the whole construction of 
a world of righteousness and a world of law. 

Says Dr. Payne: "To be in a justified state 
is not either to be pronounced just or to be made 
actually just — for both are impossible in the case 
of a sinner — but it is to be treated as if we were 
just, or rather, perhaps, to be in the state of 
238 



OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

those whom God declares he will treat as if they 
were just. ' ' ( Quoted by Campbell, ' ' Atonement, ' ' 
81.) Campbell objects to even that form of im- 
putation which holds that, while guilt and sin are 
untransferable in themselves, they are transfer- 
able in their effects. 

How is the transfer to be made from being a 
sinner under condemnation to being a justified 
person in fellowship with God? 

Granting that the ground of this change is 
provided for in the love of God, how is that love 
to be available for the sinner? That love does 
not avail while the sinner sins, else we would have 
the whole world saved, and saved in its sins : for 
God loves all. There must be something on the 
part of the sinner which makes this love avail- 
able for him. What is it? It is not an answer 
to say that it is an acceptance of the new nature 
which God, indeed, offers to him and insists upon 
his accepting. That acceptance must have some 
antecedent in the mind of the sinner. Is it re- 
pentance? "Well, if repentance is only a regret 
for the consequences of sin, and no regret for 
the nature of sin's relation to God, it is hardly 
sufficient. Here seems to be the place for the 
faith which Scripture announces as the cause of 
Justification — justified by faith. Following the 
chain of spiritual causation back, we find that the 
exhibition of God's love in the life and death of 
Christ is enough for a basis of faith. Having 
come to the place where sin is hateful, its con- 
sequences known to be baneful, the sinner looks 
239 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

about for release. At that moment the Cross is 
presented as God's attempt to rescue him, an 
exhibition of God's love. If God loves like that, 
there is hope that in spite of the fact that I, the 
sinner, have sinned, I may enter into relationship 
with him. Hence we have, first, conviction of the 
evil nature of sin; second, conviction of the love 
of God; third, faith in God's willingness to for- 
give; fourth, renunciation of sin (repentance); 
and lastly, forgiveness and acceptance of a new 
heart. The resultant state that is achieved is 
Justification, where God enters into relations 
with me as his child. This relationship thus es- 
tablished, the relation between a child and a Fa- 
ther is of the essence of Justification. Of itself 
it pronounces nothing concerning the past life. 
It neither cancels it nor justifies it; it may not 
of itself relieve me of the natural consequences 
of that life. It only guarantees that now my 
Father and I will work out together whatever 
problems are involved in love and sympathy, and 
on my part there will be trustful obedience. 

Remission of Sins. 
It is likely to be objected to our view that 
such an atonement as we have pictured does noth- 
ing with sins, that they remain just the same as 
though no atonement had been made. We reply 
by asking, What can be done with them, except 
to cease to reckon them? They can not be un- 
done; their objective results can not be undone. 
Only one thing in the world can be done about 
240 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

them : as far as they represent personal relations 
they may be overlooked, may henceforth go un- 
mentioned, may in this moral sense be forgotten. 
If this is not a sufficient treatment of them, if a 
further demand is made concerning them, that 
demand will be an impassable barrier to pardon ; 
it will destroy all possibility of reconciliation be- 
tween the offender and the offended. 

There is much extravagant language used on 
this subject that is justified neither by insight 
nor personal experience. Some time since we met 
a bright and conscientious young lawyer, whose 
training in a Christian home had been such that 
he revolted in conscience against some supposedly 
orthodox statements in reference to pardon. He 
held that it would be a violation of the perfect 
world that God had made for him to forgive sins ; 
that we ought not to ask to be excused from pen- 
alty. This raises an interesting question which 
does not seem to us to be idle. Concerning the 
question of fact whether God does remit the pen- 
alties of sin, we ought first of all to be quite clear. 

Dr. Dale (" Atonement," 373 fg.) mentions 
three conceptions of the nature of punishment: 
1. As a reformatory process. This he rejects be- 
cause it would lead to the theory that when ref- 
ormation had been accomplished without punish- 
ment, the latter would be unnecessary. 2. Punish- 
ment is an expedient for strengthening the 
authority of law by creating a new motive for 
obedience, a sort of necessity of government. 
This he rejects on the grounds that it would be 
241 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

unjust to punish one person for the benefit of a 
second person. Punishment belongs to the per- 
son himself on the grounds of his deserts, irre- 
spective of its effect on others. 3. Punishment 
is an effect of God's personal resentment against 
those who have offered an insult to his personal 
dignity. This is rejected because punishment 
would then be infliction according to the caprice 
of the offended rather than on grounds of real 
desert. 4. The fourth definition, which he adopts 
as his, is that conception which represents it as 
pain or loss inflicted for the violation of law. 
This seems to establish the ground of punishment 
as in a sense independent of the will of God. It 
is a desert belonging to the individual without a 
personal volition from God. Is God, then, free 
to forgive sin? Is he not bound to regard this 
desert in all cases and to leave the sinner under 
the operation of the law that he has violated? 

Fairbairn makes a distinction between phys- 
ical and moral evil which may enable us to pene- 
trate the subject a little deeper. " Physical evil 
is the evil men suffer ; moral evil is the evil they 
do. The one falls under the categories of choice 
and action, the other under those of results and 
consequences. And this means that moral evil is 
due to the act of the personal will, but physical 
is conditioned by the operation of fixed laws, or 
an established order. The moment the will has 
chosen, the fixed law begins to operate; and so, 
though the act may be transient, the consequences 
are permanent." (" Philosophy of the Christian 
242 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

Religion," 150.) Moral evil is the only evil or 
sin nnder onr control. It is of a nature so widely 
different from physical that it should have a name 
by itself. It is sin properly so called, and phys- 
ical evil is but its result, and yet its results are 
not exclusively physical. "It mars the godlike 
beauty which is native to the soul; it steals away 
the charm which made it seem to the eye of its 
Maker very good; it isolates it from the source 
of life; it removes it from the breast of the Al- 
mighty who breathed it into being. ' ' (Op. cit. 151.) 
Even if physical evil is the consequence of moral 
evil, it can not be shown that the former is ar- 
rested as soon as the latter ceases. The physical 
consequences continue on after the moral agent 
has changed his course. All that we can with cer- 
tainty affirm is that G-od has introduced amelio- 
rative forces which tend to overcome or do away 
with the physical consequences after moral evil 
as the cause has. ceased to operate. The follow- 
ing distinction seems to approximate the truth: 
God has established a framework of action which 
we call Nature. It expresses his will in a general 
form toward all his creatures. Its violation is 
not always a question of guilt because the viola- 
tion is not always consciously committed. Never- 
theless the penalties follow whether we violate 
knowingly or ignorantly. It has never been held 
as a universal proposition that forgiveness of sins 
relieves us of all penalties. It may be held that 
it does so in specific cases; but the law of ex- 
ceptions has never been worked out, and the gen- 
243 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

eral rule may stand : that forgiveness of sins does 
not lift penalties which the framework of nature 
imposes. 

The sins that may be forgiven are conceived 
as personal relations between the soul and God. 
Moreover, it will not do to say that spiritual 
penalties are always lifted; they are not, as a 
matter of fact. There are ameliorative influences 
let loose by restored fellowship, but they do not 
directly lift the penalties. We are left, then, with 
the view of forgiveness of sins as the re-establish- 
ment of personal relations with God, with what- 
ever consequences that may involve in the phys- 
ical and spiritual world. Future penalties, re- 
served for a day of reckoning, may be added to 
these implied present consequences ; but of these 
we have no means of examination. They can 
hardly be introduced here and conclusions drawn 
that are valid in the sphere of the known. 

Returning now to our question, What does 
pardon do with sins committed? we can readily 
see that moral evil stops the moment that the 
moral agent ceases to sin. So far as that is con- 
cerned nothiiig remains for a redemptive scheme 
to do. On the other hand, individual and social 
history shows that the physical consequences of 
moral evil do not cease when the moral agent 
experiences a change of mind or purpose, not 
even when he is pardoned by the great Lawgiver. 
Pardon does not annul the physical consequences 
of law violation. The seed of evil has been 
244 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

planted; it continues to grow after we have 
changed our character. All that we can do now 
is to combat it with the produce of a better plant- 
ing. 

But there is one other element that enters into 
the consideration, that is the element of Guilt or 
moral desert for past misdeeds. What does or 
can pardon do with guilt? 

So far as the person is concerned it is difficult 
to see that pardon makes any change concerning 
the guilt of sin. It does not lift the guilt from 
one. The person who committed the sin remains 
forever the person who committed the sin; the 
demerit of the sin remains forever the same in 
measure. Pardon does not change any fact con- 
cerned, and atonement never substitutes any 
other person in the place of the guilty one. 

The confusion that has been introduced into 
this seemingly very simple moral problem is the 
fact that if the sinner will renounce his sin as 
sinful and will change his mind, and by divine 
help will change his life 's conduct, God has prom- 
ised that his guilt for past sins will not bar pres- 
ent and future fellowship with himself. This 
seems to be the sum total of the transaction, and 
meets completely all the ethical demands of the 
situation. He will remember our sins (guilt) 
against us no more forever; he will take us into 
divine fellowship, and our moral life may thus 
have a new beginning. We cover all the case 
when we say that God is not vindictive. A bad 
245 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

past lie will allow to stand, as indeed he must, as 
a bad past, but not as an obstacle to present and 
future spiritual opportunity. 

The only alternative to this is not a removal 
or annihilation of the past sins and the guilt that 
has ensued — even God can not do that, because it 
implies the impossible, the impossible because the 
contradictory. The only possible alternative is 
that God should cherish resentment for sins now 
repented of but irremovable ; that he should seek 
to "vindicate" his authority against rebellion 
now given over. A vindictive God is not the one 
revealed by Jesus Christ. And a God seeking to 
" vindicate" his government and authority is 
one consciously weak, who does not dare to take 
back his repentant child or subject, for fear that 
he will not be able to deal with other children or 
subjects who may rebel. 

We need not encourage the idea that forgive- 
ness in God is brought about by anything outside 
of himself except by such a morally receptive at- 
titude in us as will permit God to bestow it. "We 
can not and need not make God gracious by any 
sacrifice that we may bring according to the an- 
cient notion of the function of sacrifice, nor by 
any service that we may render, nor even by any 
prayer we may offer viewed as a motive for God. 
He is already gracious. The only thing lacking 
to fellowship between him and man is such a re- 
sponse to his gracious offers as will allow his 
grace its operation without the destruction of 
man's freedom. He has rendered the necessary 
246 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

service in coming to us through his Son. He is 
now seeking to change our minds by the petitions 
and revealed sufferings of his own heart as mani- 
fested in his Son. We need only to come into a 
harmonious state of mind with him ; he is already 
forgiving in spirit. " After this revelation of 
Jesus Christ all notion of teasing God into an at- 
titude of forgiveness by prayers, sacrifices, or 
elaborate ceremonial must vanish from Christian 
thought. It is God who makes the offering; it 
is God who presents the sacrifices ; it is God who 
solicits men. After Jesus' sacrificial life and 
death religious thought must assume as its fun- 
damental postulate the good will of God toward 
men. It is he who makes the initiative in the 
atonement, and not man." Jesus " convinced 
men of God's readiness to forgive." (Dinsmore, 
op. cit. 197, 198.) 

Miley thinks that God as a Father could freely 
forgive sins as illustrated by the Parable of the 
Prodigal Son, but as a moral Ruler he could not, 
save on the basis of some satisfaction atonement. 
He says: "He had no need for the atonement in 
his fatherly disposition, but only in the require- 
ments of his rectoral offices." ("Systematic 
Theology," ii, 104.) This indicates that atone- 
ment theories part asunder according as men 
differ in their view of God. If he is pre-eminently 
a Ruler, a King, a Judge, they are inclined to 
hold to the necessity of an objective atonement. 
But if they feel that his fatherly relation com- 
prehends his moral rulership, then they can con- 
247 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ceive that he may forgive sins on the basis of 
repentance, as earthly fathers are in the habit of 
doing. 

Campbell, an author whose bold thinking has 
greatly aided us, seems to think that if the blood 
of Christ has power enough to conquer our spirits 
by the love displayed, we need have no fear that 
it will not have power enough to overcome any 
legal barriers that may stand in the way of the 
Father's willingness to forgive us our sins. He 
says : ' ' It is indeed unbelievable — no man can be- 
lieve — that receiving Christ as our life, we can 
feel that his blood does indeed cleanse us from 
all sin, in relation to that worship of God which 
is in spirit and in truth; but that we can not 
feel secure as engaged in this worship unless 
that blood of Christ, under the power of which 
our spirits have come by faith, speak to our con- 
science of penal sufferings endured for us and 
to assure us that the law has no claim against 
us." (" Nature of Atonement," 181.) 

It is quite usual in treatises on the atonement 
to present the elaborate system of sacrifices of 
the Jews as illustrative of the atonement of 
Christ. We should remind ourselves of two 
things in this connection: First, there are many 
instances of forgiveness for gross sins in the 
sight of God on the simple ground of repentance 
without any mention of sacrifices. Second, the 
ceremonial sacrifices did not avail for forgiveness 
of certain moral offenses among the Jews; for 
them a great Day of Atonement was provided. 
248 



OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

Furthermore, it is perfectly clear in the light of 
the teachings of Amos and Isaiah that sacrifices 
did not, when taken alone, avail anything in the 
forgiveness of sins. They might symbolize the 
contrite heart, but if they were an unreal or false 
expression of the heart they were an offense to 
God rather than a ground of forgiveness by him. 
This would indicate that in themselves they ac- 
complished nothing. The heart sacrifice was es- 
sential, and in recorded instances it was adequate 
standing alone. 

Moreover, this ceremonial system as such was 
repudiated by the New Testament revelation. 
The whole ceremonial system was brushed aside 
as in itself worthless in removing sin. It is not 
more clear that it was symbolic of the sacrifice 
of Christ than of the individual Christian. We 
may not assume that it teaches the atonement in 
Jesus; we must estimate it in this particular 
from the foundation up. 

That God may forgive sins without a price 
being paid to his justice is demonstrable from the 
cases of remission of sins before the atonement 
of Jesus on the Cross. To this class we would 
add those cases of forgiveness before Christ's 
death. To this, no doubt, various answers will 
be urged. First, that the element of time is not 
valid for God. But there is no possibility, from 
our point of view, of coming to any conclusion 
on such a negative ground. God forgave sins 
when the atonement was not a fact, and in any 
case only an intention. Jesus forgave sins — the 
249 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

man sick with the palsy, the woman of evil char- 
acter, etc. — without any mention of a price to be 
paid as an atonement, and while he was still liv- 
ing. But, second, it will be said that the sacrifices 
in the Old Testament were symbolical and pointed 
forward to Christ, and that sins were forgiven 
through them as a figure on the basis of an atone- 
ment that was promised and yet to be made. This 
is an assumption long held and hoary with age; 
but it is neither self-evident nor established be- 
yond controversy and investigation. There are 
those who hold that the sacrifices of the Jews 
were a mere matter of ritual, a form of worship, 
having various uses, but dissociated from the sac- 
rifice of Christ. " Toward the sacrifices of the 
temple Jesus' attitude was that of tolerance. 
Though not opposing them, he ascribed to them 
no intrinsic value as a means of reconciling God 
and man. He taught explicitly that they had no 
such value in the case of a man who, having 
wronged his fellow-man, had not made peace* with 
him (Matt. 5:23, 24), and never pointed men to 
them as a means through which they might come 
into right relations with God." (Smith & Bur- 
ton, op. cit. 111.) In the case of the cleansed 
leper he commanded him to perform the usual 
sacrifices, not as a means to cleansing, but in def- 
erence to a proper social demand that an author- 
ized officer should pronounce him cleansed, and 
thus that he was a proper person to be welcomed 
into society from which his disease had excluded 
him. The principle of the love of God as the 
250 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

ground of forgiveness is probably broader and 
more unexceptional than that of a special sac- 
rifice. 

"The true sacrifice must be not an animal 
sacrifice, but the sacrifice of man himself, not 
merely as the subject, but also as the object — self- 
sacrifice. The human sacrifice, interdicted in the 
law, sacrifices others, not the guilty man, and is 
thus a caricature of the sacrificial idea. In it the 
only surviving truth is that sin and guilt forfeit 
life or are worthy of death." (Dorner, "System 
of Christian Doctrine," iii, 409.) It would seem 
that when the sinner surrenders himself unto God 
the ethical requirements are met more fully than 
through any other suggestion. His sacrifice may 
not be worthy, and there is no legal or commer- 
cial obligation upon God to receive it; but if God's 
love moves him to receive it, every necessity in 
the situation is met as fully as can be. 

The real problem is, How to get man to make 
this surrender of himself unto his Father in 
heaven. The problem is not by some offering 
made to God to make God willing to receive him. 
We understand the Bible to teach that he is al- 
ready willing to do that if the surrender is the 
free choice of man. But man is not willing ante- 
cedently. He is wicked; he has sinned and lost 
confidence in his standing with God; he is still 
a rebel. Christ's sacrifice is admirably adapted 
to make a compelling appeal to his heart. When 
its rebellion is broken down, and confidence re- 
gained that relations with the Father may be re- 
251 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

established, then the antecedent work of sacrifice 
has been accomplished. The animal sacrifice 
seems to us to have worth in its partial giving 
up of self. The animal belongs to the sacrificer ; 
it is his property, a part of himself. In so far 
as it represents his willingness to yield himself 
to God it has worth. In so far as it was a mere 
formal offering, not carrying the heart with it, 
it was worthless. The sacrifice needed may be in- 
ferred from the fact that until man surrenders 
himself, even the sacrifice that Jesus made is of 
no value in his behalf, plainly suggesting that 
Christ's sacrifice is for the purpose of securing 
man 's sacrifice, and failing that, it has been made 
in vain. If Christ's sacrifice does not lead to 
man's sacrifice of himself, it does not lead to 
anything except the deeper condemnation for re- 
jecting such love and such an appeal. 

The assumption that a sacrifice of some kind 
is the foundation for justification leads to the 
rather intricate and probably indefensible posi- 
tion presented by Dorner in the following state- 
ment: "Since expiation is necessary according 
to the law, and yet the blood of beasts can not 
actually expiate, the symbolic sacrificial institute 
is still not an abolition of guilt. The guilt is 
simply overlooked. Further, while it is a mani- 
festation of grace, it is merely a manifestation 
of Divine long-suffering, and has not the power to 
purify the conscience. The deeper reason of this 
fact lies in the circumstance that the atonement 
was for the individual offenses, to which the sac- 
252 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

rifices apply, not an atonement for the sin, for 
the guilt-burdened state." (Op. cit. 408.) This 
being interpreted with what intelligence we can 
bring to it, seems to say that the Old Testament 
system of sacrifices did not really expiate sins at 
all, but were a sort of provisional arrangement 
by which God would put off the punishment of 
sins. These sacrifices were required, but mani- 
fested on the part of the offerer only a sort of 
surrendered will, but did not really remove the 
guilt of the sinner. 

This is a vital point. If they did not remove 
guilt (and the prophets as well as the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews assert that they do 
not), then did Old Testament characters fail of 
reconciliation with God, and fail to come into 
fellowship with him? We can hardly believe it. 
But if they did come into fellowship with God, 
on what ground? It is rather hard philosophy 
to say that Abraham's sins were not forgiven, 
and that settlement was only deferred until the 
time of the new covenant, when he shall have been 
dead eighteen hundred years. That new covenant 
could not mean anything personal and real to him 
unless he foresaw it and trusted in it, which, if 
he did, of what use was his temporal covenant 
of sacrifices? The whole matter seems too dim- 
cult, too obscure to be a required foundation of 
saving faith. It must be rejected as too artificial 
and complicated. There remains, then, nothing 
but the free grace of God as the foundation for 
justification of those who lived before the knowl- 
253 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

edge of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. 
No payment of price, no bleeding sacrifice was 
required by the Father in dealing with these 
saints of the patriarchal and Mosaic covenants as 
a foundation or justification of his forgiving love. 
But if this is granted in the case of these who 
lived before Christ came, it is untenable to as- 
sume that the Father required the sacrifice of 
his Son before he would forgive the rest of the 
world and receive them into a justified relation 
with himself. 

It will not be needful for us to enter into a 
discussion of the different forms of sacrifice of 
the old covenant. None was so prominent in the 
Jewish life and none entered so closely into re- 
lationship with the mission of Jesus as the Pass- 
over sacrifice. If we can escape the satisfaction 
or substitutional idea in it, we will hardly expect 
to find it elsewhere. Says Fairbairn: "The feast 
was the most domestic of all the feasts of Israel. 
In it the father was the priest, the home was the 
temple. The lamb was not the symbol of any 
sacerdotal function, but of family and racial 
unity, especially in the eye and purpose of God. 
Its blood was not shed to propitiate a vengeful 
Deity, and induce him to pass over the family 
for whom it had been slain and the house where 
it was being eaten, but rather to mark them as 
God's own; in other words, the paschal lamb did 
not make him gracious, but found him gracious, 
and confessed that those who offered it believed 
themselves to be the heirs of his grace. It was 
254 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

the seal of a mercy which had been shown and 
was now claimed, not the purchase of a mercy 
which was withheld and must now be bought. 
. . . Jesus translated these associations from 
the traditions which acted as the fetters of the 
past into the ideals which were to govern the fu- 
ture. He manifestly conceived himself as the sac- 
rificial lamb, for only so can we find any meaning 
in the reference to his blood ; the figure was beau- 
tiful enough to apply even to him. It was the 
symbol of innocence, meekness, gentleness of one 
who was led to the slaughter and was dumb un- 
der the hand of the shearer; but it did not speak 
of a victim whose blood was to be shed to appease 
a vindictive Sovereign. On the contrary, the 
blood told of divine grace and denoted a member 
of the family of God, a man spared, emancipated, 
introduced into all the liberties and endowed with 
all the privileges of Divine sonship." ("Philos- 
ophy of the Christian Eeligion, ' ' 423, 424. ) From 
the pre-incarnation standpoint, which is the only 
proper point of view from which to see the total 
act of Grod, the Lamb offered is offered by the 
Father, not for the purpose of inducing himself 
to graciously pass over the sins of repentant men, 
but as a love-token that he yearned to bring back 
to his bosom those who had wandered from him, 
and had thus far refused to accept any token less 
precious, less expressive of his own heart. 

The work of the Redeemer is spoken of a few 
times as a ransom which he gives for man, as in 
255 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

Mark 10 : 45, * * The Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
life a ransom for many. ' ' How shall we construe 
the thought? We must give our interpretation 
under the light and limitation of various Old Tes- 
tament incidents and usages. "To the Jew a ran- 
som was the money which a man paid to recover 
possession of his inheritance when he had parted 
with it (Lev. 25: 25-27) ; it was the price he paid 
when he purchased the freedom of any one that 
was 'nigh of kin to him' who had become a slave 
to a stranger (Lev. 25:47-49); it was what he 
gave in exchange for the life of the first-born of 
an unclean animal which he wanted to keep, and 
which the law required him either to redeem or 
to destroy (Num. 18:15; Ex. 13:13; 24:20); it 
was the five shekels which he had to pay for the 
life of his first-born child, etc." (Dale, " Atone- 
ment," 76.) 

We must exercise due care in taking up this 
ceremonial ransom into Christianity; but espe- 
cially we must note the different conditions of the 
two ransoms. To whom does Christ pay this ran- 
som? Here the early Church stumbled and said 
it was to Satan, and the answer was not wholly 
obsolete for a thousand years. But we now say, 
Nothing was owed to Satan; no ransom to him 
was required. To whom, then? 

We reject the idea that the ransom was re- 
quired by God the Father, or by some abstraction 
called Justice, or by the necessities of govern- 
ment. These rejections we have already sufn- 
256 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

ciently discussed. We can not see but that man 
himself keeps himself in bondage. By the fact 
of being free he chooses that he will continue in 
sin. He is at once the slave who is held in bond- 
age and the master who holds himself in bondage. 
He is the slave and the slave-master. It is to him 
in this second person that the ransom is required. 
His hold on the slave must be broken. Good faith 
to him must be established before he will pass 
over this slave to the new Master, the Christ, who 
ransoms him. Hence, anomalous as it may seem, 
the ransom must be paid to the man himself, and 
this fact changes the relationships of ransom. 
This fundamental distinction will change the ap- 
plication of every Scripture having the form of 
substitution. If this interpretation of ransom is 
unsatisfactory to any, they must then hold that 
the ransom is only a general transaction without 
distinct statement as to those who receive the 
price. This general form of the transaction is the 
interpretation given by Fairbairn, who says: "It 
is evident that Jesus is thinking of the fitness and 
efficacy of his death as a method of accomplishing 
a given purpose, and this determines the word 
(ransom) he chooses. He does not think of buy- 
ing off man either from the world or the devil, 
or of paying a debt to God, or of making satisfac- 
tion to law ; he simply thinks of man as enslaved 
and by his death rescued from slavery. To re- 
quire that every element in a figurative word be 
found in the reality it denotes, is not exegesis, but 
pedantry." ("Philosophy of the Christian Re- 
257 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

ligion," 410.) This latter construction rejecting 
the double character of ransoming, relieves us of 
the embarrassment of the question, which never 
had satisfactory answer, To whom is the ransom 
paid? It does not picture God to us as a Shylock 
exacting a pound of flesh, nor permit the ab- 
surdity of Satan possessing a moral right to the 
custody of man. It is a picture of our main con- 
tention that Jesus appeals to us by his death to 
be reconciled to God, and accept a place in his 
love and fellowship. 

Campbell has put the whole picture of forgive- 
ness in one single question so comprehensive and 
cogent, that we transfer it here, feeling, as he 
says, that there can be but one answer to it. He 
says: "That we may fully realize what manner 
of an equivalent to the dishonor done to the law 
and name of God by sin, an adequate repentance 
and sorrow for sin must be, and how more truly 
than any penal infliction such repentance must 
satisfy divine justice, let us suppose that all the 
sin of humanity has been committed by one human 
spirit, on whom is accumulated this immeasur- 
able amount of guilt, and let us suppose that this 
spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pass out of 
sin into holiness, and to become filled with the life 
of God's own righteousness — such a change . . . 
would imply in the spirit so changed a perfect 
condemnation of the past of its own existence, 
and an absolute and perfect repentance, a confes- 
sion of its sin commensurate with its evil. . . . 
258 



OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 

Shall this repentance be accepted as an atone- 
ment, and the past sin being thus confessed, shall 
the divine favor flow out on that present perfect 
righteousness which thus condemns the past? 
shall the present perfect righteousness be re- 
jected on account of the past sin, so absolutely 
and perfectly repented of? and shall divine justice 
still demand adequate punishment for the past 
sin, and refuse to the present righteousness ade- 
quate acknowledgment — the favor which in re- 
spect to its own nature belongs to it? It appears 
to me impossible to give any but one answer to 
these questions. We feel that such a repentance 
would, in such a case, be the true and proper satis- 
faction to offended justice, and that there would 
be more atoning worth in one tear of the true 
and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past 
could awaken in this now holy spirit than in end- 
less ages of penal woe." ("Nature of Atone- 
ment," 126.) 

It is a very proper question whether that 
preaching which has been dominated by the satis- 
faction theory of the atonement has not changed 
the divine message as it comes to us in the Bible. 
Does the gospel bring forward the necessity of 
a legal adjustment of our relation to Grod as 
prominently as have these sermons ? We will not 
raise the question here whether the Gospels ever 
raise the question of our legal relation; we only 
remind ourselves that to change the emphasis is 
to change the message. We can so exalt one 
thought and neglect another as to make the divine 
259 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

word to men a thing really different from its 
original form. The Bible portrays us as sinners; 
but is it not as sinners against a Father rather 
than sinners against a law? Are not the rela- 
tions which are disturbed personal relations 
rather than relations of government? Do not the 
Scriptures make the forgiveness of God promi- 
nent rather than the price paid in order that there 
might be forgiveness? Of course, the answer to 
this last question will depend much upon our 
view of the death of Christ, whether it be a price 
paid or a manifestation of love and a desire for 
renewed fellowship. Is not repentance made 
more prominent than propitiation? 



260 



Chapter IX. 

THE SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFI- 
CATION. 

Some years ago we heard an able minister of the 
gospel speak of the danger of the doctrine, widely 
held, as he affirmed, of salvation by Character. 
We have been on the ontlook for the dire conse- 
quences of that doctrine ever since. But we are 
as yet quite unable to discover them. We can un- 
derstand the danger of substituting a moral deed, 
narrowly defined, for a heart relation to God ; but 
how there can be any danger in the effort to attain 
a godlike character we are confessedly too blind 
to discover. From our point of view, we believe 
that in our limitations the Father would excuse 
us from about everything else if we will only be 
like his well-beloved Son in character. One might 
make wrong uses of a mere theory about charac- 
ter, but it is hardly conceivable that he could de- 
rive any ill from an effort to attain the character 
itself. The whole plan of God's relations with 
men is for the purpose of character. The teach- 
ing, the life, and the death of the Redeemer are 
for the purpose of forming a character like the 
divine. If it be assumed that in a given case the 
character is formed without any of these agencies 
operating, it may be a subject of surprise, but can 
hardly be one for regret. If out of the heathen 
261 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

jungle, where no knowledge concerning the Christ 
has ever penetrated and consequently no personal 
faith toward him has ever been exercised, some 
one shall at the last come forth who displays the 
divine elements of character of the Son of God, 
we may stand amazed at the fact, but we can 
hardly doubt that the Father above is greatly 
pleased and will vouchsafe to such an one a hearty 
welcome to his companionship. If this is not sal- 
vation by character, then we fail to comprehend 
what is meant by the phrase. The Bible, the 
Cross, the knowledge of Christ, and personal faith 
in him are the means of salvation. They repre- 
sent the machinery. But the machinery is not 
an end ; it does not exist for itself. It exists and 
operates for the sake of the product. If by hy- 
pothesis some one gains the object of its work- 
ing, the divine character, without using the ma- 
chine, we should not quibble about the process, but 
should rejoice in the results. 

This may introduce our position that the goal 
of the atonement is Sanctification, by which we 
mean nothing more nor less than a holy person- 
ality. Any plan that contemplates the reunion of 
man and God after the separation that sin has 
made, that does not provide for the attainment 
of this holy character, is self -evidently erroneous. 
No mechanical methods under the form of beauti- 
ful and impressive and expressive ritual will suf- 
fice. No judicial procedure that does its work ex- 
ternally to the soul, leaving it untouched in moral 
quality, can for a moment find standing. Any 
262 



SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

theory of atonement that is from God must have 
all its elements so to work together that the final 
result is a renewal, a purified, a regenerated, a 
sanctified, a God-indwelt spirit of man. Atone- 
ment without this morally transforming power is 
fruitless and irrational. Of all God's creatures 
man alone is capable of moral action in the fullest 
sense ; he only is capable of fellowship with God. 
The atonement is demanded because this capa- 
bility had been destroyed by sin, and it is atone- 
ment's sole function to restore this moral fellow- 
ship and life with God, the fundamental require- 
ment of which is godlikeness in his spiritual 
being. An atonement that does not do this 
does nothing as atonement. 

An atonement and pardon that do not accom- 
pany and guarantee renewed character, renewed 
citizenship under law, may find an entrance into 
human administration, but not into Divine. The 
following incident from current literature will 
make this point clear. "A young man killed a 
man and was sent to penitentiary for life. A 
minister interested himself in his case and found 
extenuating circumstances which he presented to 
the governor, who, having great confidence in the 
minister, finally gave to him a pardon for the 
young man. Joyfully he hastened to the prison, 
but first he was minded to talk with the young 
man seriously. Among other things he asked him 
what he would do if he were pardoned. The youth 
immediately said, 'I would go and kill Judge 
Blank' — the man who had sentenced him. The 
263 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

minister was shocked. He saw clearly that the 
man had murder in his heart, and it would not 
do to set him free. So, without telling him of the 
pardon, he went out and tore it into pieces." 

This may not have been according to human 
law and justice. If the young man committed the 
deed under circumstances that justified him in 
the sight of the law, he was entitled to his free- 
dom, without regard to the future. 

But the minister dealt with the young man as 
the Heavenly Father deals with us. In the Divine 
administration, even though we were not justified 
in the deed, we may have pardon if we will secure 
the future by contrition and a better heart. This 
Divine method, while probably not practical for 
human procedure, owing to our inability to know 
about the contrition and the new heart, appeals 
to us as in every way the better method of dealing 
with sin, securing every end that abstract justice 
can, and very much besides. 

The following story has gotten into the ma- 
terial used in illustrating the grace of God: A 
man was on trial for his life. The case proceeded 
without prejudice or partiality, and the man was 
condemned by the jury. The prisoner showed the 
utmost indifference during the trial, and also 
when the judge pronounced sentence upon him, 
adding his expressions of horror at the indiffer- 
ence which the prisoner had manifested through 
the trial. But as they were leading the con- 
demned man back to his cell, he drew from his 
breast the pardon which his friends had procured 
264 



SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

from the king before the trial began. In conse- 
quence of this, a condemned man, he walked out 
from the custody of the law a free man. 

We hold that such a story, reciting no more 
details of ground for pardon and purpose of a 
new life, is a complete travesty on the Christian 
doctrine of atonement. This callous indifference 
to processes of law, based on the consciousness 
that he was above law, can become an absolutely 
lawless spirit. Where one was conscious of his 
righteousness, the indifference might be justified ; 
but on the other hand, if conscious of his ill-desert, 
it would be most evil, resting only on the fact 
that he had a ' ' pull ' ' with the King. Apart from 
repentance and change of heart and mind, no man 
has any such "pull" with Almighty God. No ob- 
jective atonement of any nature can ever give 
it to him. Such a doctrine is the foundation of 
as deep immorality as the world has yet conceived. 

Corresponding to the doctrine that our sins 
are laid upon Christ is the doctrine that his right- 
eousness is laid upon us, and thus we are justified 
in God's sight. Sometimes this doctrine is an- 
nounced outright, but more frequently in later 
literature in some mediated course. Says Dale: 
"The Lord Jesus Christ, the Moral Ruler of the 
human race, instead of inflicting the penalties, has 
submitted to them ; he has ' died, the Just for the 
unjust,' and has been 'made a curse for us.' 
This supreme act becomes ours — not by formal 
imputation — but through the law which consti- 
tutes his life the original spring of our own." 
265 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

(''Atonement," 422.) This author has prepared 
for this statement by some pages of argument; 
he follows it with a page more in illustration. All 
we can say is : Blessed is the man who can see it. 
We find ourselves utterly unable to see how 
Christ's identification with the race, which we 
fully accept, makes any act of his our act in a 
personal and moral sense. By faith we can ap- 
propriate the blessings which he has provided 
for us ; but that is the appropriation of a blessing, 
and not the confusion of a personality. 

We can not help but believe that this author 
is looking into a fog bank and has constrained 
himself to believe, doubtless through stress of 
theory, that he sees something. We believe that 
that something will vanish as soon as the fog lifts. 
We can construct no argument except the one of 
unreality, against what he says: for we can see 
no connection between his primary position — 
Christ's incorporation into the race, and our in- 
corporation into a spiritual body, into Christ — 
and the conclusion, that his act becomes mine. If 
the incorporation were in the sense of Pantheism, 
by which we lose individuality and personality, 
and become merely a part of a great organism 
of which Christ were the intellectual and voli- 
tional part, then, of course, what any part did the 
whole would do, and there would be no distinction 
of moral action between him and me. But this is 
not a Christian conception. It is a solution of 
the atonement by the destruction of human per- 
sonality and responsibility. We are willing to be 
266 



SUBJECTIVE BESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

a Pantheist up to the point where all is God save 
personality. To pass that point is no solution; 
it is mere losing out the factor of human person- 
ality, and sin ceases to be a problem at all. 

There can be no doubt that God desires that 
man should be righteous ; but it is difficult to dis- 
cover a foundation for the demand for man's 
righteousness if it is to be merely formal, as it 
must be if it is only imputed to us. Eeal and per- 
sonal righteousness will fit one for the fellowship 
with God and the society of the eternally saved. 
But a righteousness that he does not have on his 
own account, but only as a participation in the 
form of a legal fiction, has no surer ground in ref- 
erence to righteousness than it would have to any 
other attribute of God. It is this foundationless 
claim for righteousness which makes Campbell 
ask: "As to the supposed necessity for God's im- 
puting righteousness that he may see us as per- 
fectly righteous, why must our participation in 
Christ's righteousness be the meeting for the de- 
mand for perfection any more than our partici- 
pation in his holiness, or his wisdom, or the free- 
dom that is in him? All is perfect in him, and 
he and his perfection belong to us ; but all in the 
same sense." (Op. cit. 192.) 

One view of justification is that we do not be- 
come personally just, but on the ground of faith 
God imputes Christ's righteousness to us, clothes 
us in the garment of Christ's purity. This view 
seems to be the obverse side of the substitution 
267 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

of Christ bearing our sins; his righteousness is 
substituted for our unrighteousness. The first 
substitution may lend some logical force to the 
second. But the whole comes to a rather unsatis- 
factory conclusion. Our sin is transferred to him 
without his becoming a sinner, and his righteous- 
ness is transferred to us without our becoming 
righteous. This seems to be a provision for a 
salvation that is a fiction in its foundation and 
a fiction in its results. It seems to be invented 
in the despair of making sinners personally right- 
eous, and provides a method by which they may 
be called righteous when they are not really right- 
eous. For ourselves, it is clear that unless Chris- 
tianity makes people righteous in their own per- 
sonal character, it is a failure, and candor calls 
apon us to admit it.* 

The other view is that faith is an initial act 
of righteousness by which we enter upon a life 
of obedience. When we accept Jesus as our 
Savior we accept him as our Lord and Master. 
Thus while we do not become morally perfect at 



* " If Divine and human action are brought into such an 
opposition to each other that the gain of the one signifies the 
loss of the other, all freedom of man and all human activity 
become prejudicial to the all-power of the Divine, as well as 
to an unconditional surrender of man; and both of these are 
absolutely necessary to religion. If such a one-sided course is 
adopted, religion will restrict freedom as much as possible up 
to complete annihilation; indeed, this line of thought made all 
explicitly religious characters determinists in their consciousness. 
. . . All this easily leads to overstrain and an untruth; when 
this track of thought is followed, it depicts man as impotent, 
depraved, and bad, in order to allow the Divine grace to shine 
all the clearer against a dark background of human existence. 

268 



SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

a bound, do not attain at once to a complete moral 
stature, we are making a righteous beginning, and 
by accepting obedience we are entering on a road 
which leads to perfection. The righteousness is 
a righteousness of Christ, but it is an appropri- 
ated righteousness by which we become person- 
ally righteous. It is not a mere substitution of 
Christ's righteousness, which is only a legal fic- 
tion and a moral impossibility, but a righteous- 
ness which becomes personal in so far as we re- 
main true to the law of its acceptance. 

A bishop of the Negro race is credited with 
saying: "But through his death and resurrection 
we may commit sins of lying, stealing, Sabbath- 
breaking, getting drunk, gambling, whoring, mur- 
dering, and every species of villainy, and then 
come to Grod through our resurrected Christ and 
enter heaven in the end." This is a little more 
crudely expressed than usual, but the same doc- 
trine with its inferences has often been heard 
from white preachers. Another Negro preacher 
had attained a much better point of view when 



We have thus obtained the unfortunate doctrine of original sin 
which drew Christianity into Manichseism ; and thus we find that 
opinion of Luther that man does not so much acquire righteous- 
ness as that righteousness is imputed to him by faith. Such an 
opinion, if thought out, resolves the great struggle of the world 
into an appearance and a play." (Eucken: "The Truth of Ee- 
ligion," 221, 222.) 

This suggests what an investigation of Church history may 
confirm, that emphasis on the doctrine of original sin has been 
found only with those teachers who were determinists. Be- 
lievers in human freedom may have inherited the doctrine and 
thus have accepted it in the sense that they did not reject it; 
but it does not belong naturally to their school of thought. 

269 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

he said in his sermon, ' ' There are many who have 
three wives who say they are going to heaven; 
but that 's because they don't know God." 

It is probable that it was such extreme illus- 
trations of an unethical atonement which has 
brought about the drift from the mechanical and 
legal in all our theological conceptions, and is the 
fundamental reason for dissatisfaction with all 
legal and governmental theories of atonement. 
Because religion must be ethical there is placed 
"an absolute bar to the older Calvanism, of sal- 
vation by Divine decree, supposing that that made 
conceivable the idea of character at all. The 
atonement, too, can get its full meaning only as 
it is conceived as ethical throughout." (King, 
"Reconstruction in Theology," 182.) 

"It is the doctrine of the Book of Revelation 
that they are acceptable unto God who have been 
cleansed from sin, who are clothed in the fine 
linen of righteous acts. Men are thus cleansed 
and purchased unto God to be his people, because 
of, or through, the blood of the Lamb that was 
slain; i. e., through participation in that moral 
life, that attitude toward sin and the world which 
Jesus manifested in the laying down of his life. 
Thus the condition of acceptance by God is eth- 
ical, and the death of Christ has its significance 
in that it is sufficient for the bringing-about of 
this ethical condition. ' ' ( Smith & Burton, ' ' Bib- 
lical Ideas of Atonement," 263.) 

This idea of pardon without atonement of any 
kind is finding its way into the theories of the 
270 



SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

new criminology. Some reformers are urging 
that the way to make men good is to treat them 
as if they were good, demanding of them no se- 
curities for conduct. Doubtless many persons 
have been classified as criminals who are rather 
irresponsible degenerates, and their cases should 
be a special study of society. Such classes aside, 
we hold that government, human or divine, rests 
upon the guarantees of renewed life and conduct 
from those who have fallen into transgression. 
Their evil conduct demonstrated, we must assume 
that they are evil in heart, and they are under 
obligation to show a renewed purpose before they 
can be dealt with on the basis of freedom and 
usual human rights. "We do not enter this discus- 
sion so far as to make any suggestions as to what 
these guarantees of a new life shall be or what 
shall be done with them in case of a failure to 
give them. We only insist that justification be- 
fore the law and sanctification in life must be 
closely held together. 

A somewhat noted case occurred recently in 
Ohio. A man was adjudged guilty by a jury of 
manslaughter under circumstances of great ag- 
gravation. The judge pronounced sentence of 
many years in the penitentiary, and then, without 
any public • securities whatever, unconditionally 
suspended the sentence. It was not because there 
was any atonement of any kind, any change of 
heart that could be evidenced, any mitigating cir- 
cumstances in connection with the commission of 
the crime. The defense of the judge afterwards 
271 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

seemed to have no better foundation than that 
he thought that was the way to reform men. The 
sequel showed that it was the way to make a bad 
man worse, the way to disrupt the civic commu- 
nity, and to furnish a sufficient ground for the 
recall of the judge, if the people had had the legal 
machinery to permit it. We may rest quite as- 
sured that the judgments of heaven will meet 
quite as high standards as those which are im- 
posed upon our Court of Common Pleas. No ad- 
ministration of God will encourage sin and crime 
in his universe. There will be pardon and mercy, 
a mercy that is as much greater than man's as 
the heavens are higher than the earth, but there 
will not be in its ministration the least encourage- 
ment to sin. "The prophet's emphasis upon re- 
pentance is the core of the New Testament teach- 
ing. Their insistence upon right character as the 
only way to reconciliation with God is everywhere 
taken for granted in the New Testament." (Smith 
& Burton, Op. cit. 265.) 

The relation of sin to one who has experienced 
the benefits of the atonement is expressed by Paul 
in the strong word, death. (Gal. 2: 20; 2 Cor. 5: 
14-17). As a corpse can not enter into the activi- 
ties of life, so a redeemed man can not enter into 
the activities of a life dominated by animalism as 
long as he is redeemed. "The death that he died 
is ours, both in that it was for us, and in that it 
belongs to us to enter into it and share it with 
him, living no longer for the fulfillment of our 
own purposes and ends, but for his, who for us 
272 



SUBJECTIVE EESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

died and rose again." (Smith & Burton, op. cit. 
190.) Stevens comments on this passage in 2 Cor. 
as follows : " All died to sin — that is, in an ethical 
sense — in and with the death of Christ. The 
moral renewal of mankind, which in Pauline 
phraseology is so often represented as a dying to 
sin, and which had its efficacious cause in Christ's 
death, is spoken of as accomplished when his 
death was experienced. It is a mystical identi- 
fication in time of cause and consequence. ' ' 
("Pauline Theology," 233.) 

How shall God be just and the justifier of sin- 
ners ? It can not be overlooked that sin produces 
in the heart of God a conflict. He loves that which 
is holy; but he also loves his children. Their un- 
holiness grieves him, but does not extinguish his 
love. Out of this conflict the Father-heart of love 
comes victorious; out of love's provision his love 
of holiness also is satisfied : for it provides for the 
restored holiness of his children. The failure of 
love, manifested in alienating his children perma- 
nently, would have also disappointed his love of 
holiness; for it would have eventuated in their 
permanent sinfulness. 

* ' The justice and righteousness of God and his 
holiness, and also his truth and faithfulness, pre- 
sented difficulties in the way of our salvation 
which rendered for their removal an atonement 
necessary. . . . The goodness and the love of 
God, as the moral ruler and governor of the uni- 
verse, also demanded an atonement, that our sal- 
vation might be consistent with the well-being of 
18 273 



THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the moral universe. . . . But justice looking at 
the sinner, not simply as the fit subject of punish- 
ment, but as existing in a moral condition of un- 
righteousness, and so its own opposite, must de- 
sire that the sinner should cease to be in that con- 
dition ; should cease to be unrighteous : righteous- 
ness in God craving for righteousness in man, 
with a craving which the righteousness in man 
alone can justify. So also of holiness. In one 
view it repels the sinner, and would banish him 
to outer darkness because of its repugnance to 
sin. In another it is pained by the continued ex- 
istence of sin and unholiness, and must desire that 
the sinner should cease to be sinful. ... He 
who is able to interpret the voice within him truly 
. . . will be found saying, . . . ' Surely the di- 
vine righteousness desires to see me righteous — 
the divine holiness desires to see me holy. . . . 
Good and righteous is the Lord ; therefore will he 
teach sinners the way that they should choose.' 
A Savior because a just God." (Campbell, 
"Atonement," 25, 26, 27.) 

The restored fellowship between man and God 
culminating in the sanctified state of man is pro- 
vided for by the Savior in what he calls a new 
covenant. He says, ' ' This is my blood of the cov- 
enant, which is shed for many." This doubtless 
points back to the Old Testament symbol in the 
case of the ratification of a covenant. An animal 
was slain and Moses divided the blood in half, 
one part of which was sprinkled upon the altar 
and the other half was sprinkled on the people. 
274 



SUBJECTIVE BESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

This, on one part, was a symbolical giving of their 
lives unto God by the people. They were to de- 
vote their lives to him, not as the heathen often 
do by being slain unto him, but by their sanctified 
conduct, by living for him and unto him. The 
blood of the animal, typifying life, substituted for 
the life of the people, was sprinkled on the altar, 
that is, giving it unto God. On the other part, the 
other half of the blood, which represented the life 
of God, was sprinkled upon the people, a symbol- 
ical giving by God of his life to the people. He 
thus became their God, and they became his 
people. This very expressive substitution has in 
it, one may readily see, no thought of substituting 
the animal in death for the deserved death of the 
people. (Vid. Ex. 24: 6-8.) It is rather a beauti- 
ful representation of that which occurs as the 
result of atonement in the restored fellowship be- 
tween God and his children. 

The expression that John the Baptist uses 
concerning Jesus challenges our attention, " Be- 
hold the Lamb of God that taketh away (or 
beareth) the sin of the world." It is natural to 
assume that John is referring to some Old Testa- 
ment usage or sacrificial incident. Just which 
one is sufficiently indicated by the phrase it is not 
easy to decide. The Passover Lamb is excluded 
because of entire lack of points of contact. The 
lamb referred to in Isa. 53 has sufficient points 
of similarity to John's references to receive the 
favor of thoroughly good exegetes. Others seem 
to have in mind a rather loose reference to Azazel, 
275 



THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the goat bearing the confessed sins of the people 
away into the wilderness. "We will not press 
the exegetical difficulties, first, that it is a lamb 
and not a goat, and second, the goat was not slain 
as a sacrificial offering. We prefer to consider 
the incident as a possible symbol of the Lamb to 
whom John refers; but we recognize that the 
analogy must be somewhat loosely held. Perhaps 
then, as always, symbols were not referred to 
with careful exactness. Dorner evidently has this 
incident in mind in the following discussion, and 
we quote his statement as one of the possible 
views held. He says: "Atrein- (alpav) does not, 
indeed, signify 'to bear' in the sense of enduring 
or suffering, but of taking away. But that the 
taking away does not take place by mere teaching 
or example is shown by amnos (a/^os), which 
points to the sacrificial idea. Hence also not 
merely to the taking away of sin, but primarily 
of guilt must be thought of, and therefore expi- 
ation. . . . Although it is not expressly said 
that the lamb takes the sin upon himself, still the 
thought must lie at the basis that the lamb re- 
moves the sin of the world by bearing it away; 
i. e., still therefore, innocently taking the guilt 
and its curse upon himself." (" System of Chris- 
tian Doctrine," iii, 415.) 

This reference to the lamb (goat) bearing 
away the sin into the wilderness is a fundamental 
conception of first-rate importance in any inter- 
pretation we may give it. Perhaps the ordinary 
interpretation has held that John's thought was 
276 



SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

concerning the guilt of sin, and therefore this 
discussion should be under Justification ; but our 
view is that, as a Sin-bearer, Christ takes away 
the sin in personality, and hence this whole mat- 
ter has to do with Sanctification. To us it is 
conceivable that in picture or symbol the sins 
of the people could be confessed over the head 
of a lamb, and then that it should bear them away. 
A striking picture! What does it teach? Cer- 
tainly not a literal bearing away of sin or sins. 
That is quite absurd. So a literal fulfillment is 
also quite unthinkable. But the picture would 
be a legitimate representation of anything that 
procured the removal of our sins. Sins are not 
substance, that could be borne away as a bundle ; 
but they are a moral quality, and if by persuasion 
or appeal or by anything that caused man to re- 
nounce them they are removed, the transaction 
might legitimately be represented as being loaded 
on to a lamb. To think of a literal fulfillment of 
the symbol by Jesus, however, is transcending the 
limitations of moral operation. Campbell evi- 
dently has some such Scripture incident in mind 
when he says: "In no sense did the confession of 
the people over the victim, thus selected as phys- 
ically perfect, connect these sins with it or lay 
them upon it; for in no real sense could it bear 
them. Therefore, while that confession indicated 
and foretold the laying of men's sins upon Christ, 
it shed no light upon that which these words ex- 
press — no light either upon the capacity for bear- 
ing our sins which was in Christ because of his 
277 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

moral and spiritual perfection, or of that reality 
of coming under their weight which was to be in 
his consciousness in making his soul an offering 
for sin." (Op. cit. 106.) 

A Christian doctrine should not be merely a 
subject of intellectual interest. If true, it is the 
statement of the interaction of relations between 
God and men, and consequently should pulsate 
with life. The nearer the exact truth it is, the 
more vital it should be with the dynamic of sal- 
vation. From age to age, as we grope, even 
though slowly, into the light of truth, our doc- 
trine should become more and more important, 
because more and more saving. As we are en- 
abled to eliminate, grain by grain, the mass of 
error that may have clung to them, by so much 
should they lose their feebleness and defenseless- 
ness in the world's great conflict. 

We would not even wish that our view of 
atonement should escape this test. Let its power 
be registered in character as its final sanction. 
"We can not help but feel a great confidence that 
the portrayal of a suffering God, whose heart 
now bleeds because of the world's sin, is a pic- 
ture with an appeal far stronger and calculated to 
win the reconciliation of man far more potently 
than the traditional picture that represented only 
an historic fact, accomplished and forever past, 
however great the moment portrayed may be. 
God pleading with us to be reconciled is more 
influential to the men now living than God whose 
278 



SUBJECTIVE EESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 

pleadings are forever closed because his atone- 
ment has been long an accomplished fact. The 
Father that ever has forgiveness in his heart for 
sinners is more able to draw sinful sons back to 
himself than the Father whose anger must be pro- 
pitiated before he can forgive. 



279 



Chapter X. 

THE BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 

The nature of the atonement should receive much 
light from its working through us. That Jesus 
intended his followers to relate themselves to the 
sin of the world and its alleviation in the same 
way that he was related, can not, we think, be per- 
manently doubted. His significant words to 
James and John, "The cup that I drink ye shall 
drink; and with the baptism that I am baptized 
withal shall ye be baptized" (Mark 10:39 and 
Matt. 20:23), and his words to the entire com- 
pany of the apostles, "He that believeth on me, 
the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater 
works than these shall he do, because I go unto 
the Father," (John 14:12), are entirely harmo- 
nious with all his teaching, and only make explicit 
the meaning of his keynote command, "Follow 
me." The words of Paul to the Colossians (1: 
24), "Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, 
and fill up on my part that which is lacking of 
the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's 
sake," explain to us his constant note of rejoicing 
in the fellowship which he has with the suffering 
of Christ. The words of Peter are even more un- 
mistakable in their import: "For hereunto were 
ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, 
leaving you an example, that ye should follow his 
280 



BELIEVEB'S ATONEMENT. 

steps." In succeeding verses the effect of fol- 
lowing Christ in suffering, while innocent, is illus- 
trated in different situations. 

These instances will show sufficiently that the 
disciples of Jesus are called upon to suffer vi- 
cariously for the wicked, that they may be won 
to righteousness. It may be successfully main- 
tained that when Jesus laid down his work at the 
ascension, he handed it over in all its implications 
to his disciples to carry forward in the same 
identical lines in which he himself had borne it 
while among them. 

But it can not be discovered in the actual 
working of this atonement that we are now used 
in a substitutional sense to suffer in the place of 
the wicked. We suffer on their behalf, but not 
in their stead. Their unrighteousness and its pain 
are lifted by their repentance and reform, and not 
directly by our suffering. We may lift them out 
of sin and suffering when we are instrumental in 
getting them to turn from unrighteousness which 
brings the pain and the death; but if we are un- 
successful, we, as also did Jesus, are suffering 
in vain for them. 

In obedience to love, which is the atoning prin- 
ciple, we bear their sins in our body, and relate 
ourselves to them in all the forms affirmed of 
Jesus. Yet the suffering is related to the sinner 
morally and not mechanically or judicially. It is 
effectual if the sinner will yield to the influence 
that is brought to bear in the appeal; but if he 
hardens his heart against the appeal which love 
281 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

makes, he remains with his sin and its conse- 
quences just as if no one had suffered for him. 
The only effect of the atoning effort is to add the 
increased sense of condemnation and defenseless- 
ness when the day of retribution comes, by the 
consciousness that love was resisted and vicari- 
ous suffering on his behalf was rejected. 

The working of this principle of vicarious suf- 
fering in human society is a demonstration before 
our eyes. Either it teaches the nature of the 
atoning work of Jesus Christ, or all his commands 
to follow him fully are idle and impracticable. 
That it is not substitutional in human society is 
a conclusion from direct insight. That it is not 
substitutional in the work of Jesus Christ is an 
immediate and unescapable inference. 

With the substitutional atonement in mind, 
men have been in the habit of saying of the 
heathen, or of any other class that may be the 
subject of interest at the moment, Christ died for 
them, and surely they will be saved. Even though 
only a few are bold enough to draw the inference 
that all will be saved, yet it is believed by this 
class that a proportion of them, possibly as large 
as are saved among gospeled peoples, will finally 
be rescued from the bonds of sin. If Christ died 
in the stead of these people, this conclusion is in- 
deed well based, and the hesitancy to include all 
in the blessedness is not at all logical or worthy 
of our faith. But the conclusion, nevertheless, is 
so irrational from any standpoint of life-observa- 
tion as to discredit the foundation of it. 
282 



BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 

Christ died, indeed, on behalf of the whole 
world. If we think of any particular individuals 
for whom he died in direct relation, we must con- 
fine our attention to those who saw his life and 
death, heard his words, and also to those who 
shall be influenced by the story of these privileged 
ones, who loved him and caught his spirit. 

To extend the atoning influence outside of 
these, to those who have never heard the story of 
his mission of love in the world, is to make it a 
mere judicial decree by which their legal relations 
to the Kingdom are changed, but which has no di- 
rect influence upon their moral and spiritual char- 
acter. This is to change the nature of salvation 
from something done in a man, which makes him 
in consciousness and moral quality a son of God, 
to something done for a man which leaves him 
in his own inherent quality just the same as he 
was. What such a salvation would be worth it 
is hard to appreciate. No spiritual microscope 
could discover its effect, either within the man 
or in the changed character of the universe. If 
that is the sum of the atonement in its effect upon 
the world, we may get all the comfort we are 
able to out of its legalistic relations, but we will 
still need an atonement to produce some actual 
spiritual effects upon the character of the all-too- 
real a sinner. The former will have no effect 
upon the sin of the world ; will not heal the wounds 
of the universe which sin has made; nor will it 
comfort and strengthen the human heart in its 
blindness and ignorance of what has been done. 
283 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

Christ's atonement we conceive to be some- 
thing mnch more real. It is a spiritual force 
actually liberated in the world, through the life 
and death of Jesus Christ, but is conditioned in 
its benefits necessarily by transmission through 
other lives and the sacrifices of those who have 
heard of Jesus, have believed on him, have yielded 
themselves to him, and undertake to follow him 
wholly, even to entering into his atoning spirit 
and drinking the cup of which he drank and, if oc- 
casion presents, dying the death that manifests 
the same love and loyalty to a task that his life 
and death showed. 

The substitutional death of Christ would leave 
us all who follow him, as mere bystanders. We 
look on him and see him suffer for the world; 
we may be very grateful for it — we should be un- 
speakably so ; but whether we are or not, the re- 
sult to the world is just the same. The heathen 
in whose place Christ suffered will be brought into 
the kingdom, whether we go and tell them of the 
story or not; whether we make any sacrifices to 
inform them and to influence them or not. 
Whether we stand at some post of duty, where 
the opposition encountered is very great and the 
price paid for doing duty is very large, will make 
no difference. The one great atoning work of 
the world has been accomplished ; we need feel no 
responsibility. 

This is a theory very comfortable to self-and- 
luxury lovers ; but is it true to life f Is it true to 
the representation that Christ made to his fol- 
284 



BELIEVEE'S ATONEMENT. 

lowers'? "Was it so understood by his apostles? 
If it be true, it was an impertinence for Paul to 
say that he was filling up in his body what was 
lacking in the suffering of Christ. There is noth- 
ing lacking, his death will reach the last man with- 
out further concern from us, if substitutionalism 
be true. 

The teaching of Jesus better accords with the 
view that when he closed his sacrificial work in 
the world, he handed it over to those who would 
follow him, and they were to carry it on until 
sin is overcome and the open sore of the world 
has been healed. 

The vitality of the death of Christ in this lat- 
ter view is just as great as in the former view, 
but it differs in that it leaves in the world, after 
Jesus has departed, the atoning forces and the 
powers actually reformatory, while in the for- 
mer the atoning formula — and it is difficult to see 
that it is more than a formula — is complete. Even 
if the formula is complete, saving forces are 
forces actually existing; they enter into history; 
they pass from heart to heart. The affirmation 
that Jesus completed them is tantamount to say- 
ing that morally saving forces were withdrawn 
when his personal work was accomplished. It 
means that even when men are full of love and 
the sacrificing spirit, these do not modify the 
problem. They are beautiful in our relations to 
the Father as responses to what he has done ; but 
they have no effect in the present problem of aton- 
ing for the world's sin. On the contrary, we know 
285 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

that to-day the necessity for sacrificial suffering 
holds in human society as much as in the year 
29 A. D. The law is unchangeable. Jesus, as the 
Great Head of the Church, is the great Example 
in illustration of the law ; but the Church becomes 
his Church only in so far as it catches his spirit 
and follows him even unto death, not simply in 
the effort to save itself, but also in the effort to 
save the world. 

No bloom of rose till long compressed 
In the close bondage of the bud; 

No nation saved, no wrongs redressed, 
Without some flow of willing blood. 

" Without the shedding of blood there is no 
remission," is the principle that governs human 
conditions in all history. It is a meager insight 
into this principle, if not its perversion, which 
would limit it to changing the mind of the Father 
toward his sinful child. Every one who would 
cure the sin of the world must bear the sin of 
the world. In this Jesus is our ideal Illustration, 
and not the isolated sin-bearer of the world. 
Jeremiah, the great sin-bearer of Israel, said: 
"Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a 
fountain of tears, that I might weep day and 
night for the slain of the daughter of my peo- 
ple ! " Principal John Caird said, ' ' Not only can 
a good man suffer for sin; but it may be laid 
down as a principle that he will suffer for it in 
proportion to his goodness." 

286 



BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 

"Is it true, Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer 
most, 

That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, 
And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of 
the strain?" 

Of what benefit was the suffering of the 
prophets and the anguish of the saints of old? 
Would the world be just as rich if they had de- 
clined to make their sacrifice f If not, in what way 
can we connect their pain with our present weal, 
if not on the basis of vicarious suffering for us 
and for the world that has absorbed their moral 
power as the earth drank in their blood. Take a 
cross-section of the moral forces that are now 
working in history, and you will find Moses as 
large for us as he was for the Israelites, and 
Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Paul. George Adam 
Smith is credited with saying, "The doctrine of 
vicarious suffering grew up because it was an in- 
dispensable part of human life and experience." 
He illustrates it by reference to Jeremiah : ' ' The 
shame and the incurableness of sin which the 
people did not feel, Jeremiah took upon himself. 
He confesses sin for the people. He spoke as 
if they themselves felt the terror and helplessness 
which overwhelmed him and which he felt for 
them. ... He loved this people, and in the 
meeting of love and conscience he proved how 
such a man can suffer for the people. He did 
not understand it; for he was not Christ. The 
only possible explanation is, that if a man have 
287 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

the divine gift of a purer heart and a more loving 
conscience, there comes the inevitable obligation 
of suffering." 

That the atonement of Christ was a moral 
power, and not a mere act for the judicial change 
of relations, may be inferred from the fact that 
the suffering of Jesus on the Cross does not seem 
to have made any immediate impression on the 
sin of the world, nor has any appreciable impres- 
sion on sin ever been made in all those parts of 
the world where the story of Jesus' love has not 
been told. Any effect that it may have made upon 
people deprived of the light of Christian truth 
has only been on the pages of theological treatises, 
in the legal system of satisfactionist atonements. 
They tell us that it has atoned for the sins of the 
world, and in their systems that atonement was 
of a nature to be completed in a single transac- 
tion. They interpret the words of Jesus, "It is 
finished, ' ' to mean that at that moment atonement 
was complete; the debt is paid; the satisfaction 
is provided. In justice there seems to be nothing 
more to do than to proclaim the release of the 
sinner from his guilt, and his release can not be 
conditioned even on his knowledge of the pro- 
vision for it. 

If atonement is an actual bringing of man into 
spiritual fellowship, all such views are as f ounda- 
tionless as they are inconsequential. In itself 
considered, apart from the impression wrought 
on the mind of men through knowledge of the love 
of God, man was in just the same condition after 
288 



BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 

the Cross that he was before. Unconditionally 
it had wrought no change in the situation of man 
or upon the world's bulk of woe and sin. As a 
gospel to be announced, it was complete ; but the 
effect of it was conditioned on its impression 
through announcement. But the whole work of 
annunciation yet remained. Meantime the sin of 
the world wrought its same havoc in society, mak- 
ing the hearts of all men to bleed and the lives of 
all men to be broken. 

This work of annunciation, or bringing the 
love of God to bear upon the nature of men, pro- 
vides the opportunity for all the followers of 
Jesus to enter into fellowship with his suffering, 
that the ends for which he died may actually be 
reached. It then becomes possible for Paul in 
his years of toil, accompanied with social ostra- 
cism, persecution, privation, and pain, to say: 
I rejoice in the fellowship of the suffering of 
Christ. I am actualizing his great purposes. I 
am filling up that which he would have done if 
he had remained, but because of his departure was 
lacking in the suffering of Jesus for the Church. 
The work of atonement goes on as long as sin 
goes on. Jesus has retired from the world activi- 
ties in the flesh, and has handed over his task of 
reconciling the world to the Father to his follow- 
ers, to all who will live godly in his name. 

This brings us all into the great work which 

Jesus came into the world to do. He has given 

the great demonstration of the love of God to men, 

a demonstration which no other could authorita- 

289 



THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 

tively make in the name of the Father, a demon- 
stration, however, which was the culmination of 
a long course which had been going on under the 
direction of God through his servants the priests 
and prophets. But now, with this complete, ut- 
terly adequate revelation of the love of God, we, 
his followers, may take up the work in the same 
spirit, to accomplish the same end. His work 
without ours did not reach the individuals for 
whom it was intended. Unless Paul had preached 
this gospel in Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, Ephe- 
sus and Corinth, the death of Christ would have 
been fruitless for the sinners there. 

If we were asked, What causes the Kingdom 
of God to be so slow in its realization in the 
world? we would say that the most comprehensive 
reason, including various reasons of minor pro- 
portions, is that the followers of Jesus are re- 
fusing to be crucified as was he. They are refus- 
ing to drink from the cup from which he drank 
to an extent that makes a barrier to progress in 
spiritual things. They are putting aside the vi- 
carious life, in which, as well as in various ethical 
duties, they are called to be his followers. He 
never gave us any promise of life in this world 
save the promise of the kind of life which he him- 
self lived — a life that would relate itself to the 
salvation of others by the same principle which he 
exemplified on the Cross. Until we shall learn 
this and dedicate ourselves to it, as all great 
Christians have done before us, we will hold back 
his Kingdom to an ignominious rate of progress. 
290 



BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 

What we mean is illustrated by the following 
incident : George Adam Smith met a young Cath- 
olic missionary priest, who told him that he was 
going to see his mother for the last time. He 
was home from the Congo. ''Why do you say 
for the last time?" said Smith. The young priest 
replied: "Do n't you know that the average length 
of a missionary's life on the Congo is two and a 
half years? I am going back, and shall never 
return. Therefore I am paying my last visit to 
my mother." "But why," said Smith, "do you 
go to the Congo?" Looking him squarely in the 
face, the priest answered, "The life I now live 
in the flesh I live in the faith of the Son of God, 
who loved me and gave himself for me." 

Thomas Hanby, one of the early preachers in 
Scotland, lay dying, and he was heard to say, 
"This is great work." "What is great work?" 
was asked. "Dying work is great work," he re- 
plied. 



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